The Vice-Minister for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development Dmitry Mun reported that in the coming years, technology and artificial intelligence could displace up to 2.5 million specialists in Kazakhstan.
According to Tengrinews.kz, the forecast regarding the number of professions that could be replaced by technology was prepared by the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection.
"We spoke with the Vice-Minister — in the next five years, 2.5 million specialists could potentially be at risk of their specialities being automated. Of these, around one million specialists could be replaced due to the application of artificial intelligence," noted Dmitry Mun.
To mitigate the consequences, the state has developed a retraining plan. It is expected that by the end of 2029, one million citizens will complete training. The first free courses are already available on the Astana Hub platform, where new skills — including in the field of AI — can be acquired.
According to Dmitry Mun, the ministries are currently developing programmes for training data annotators — specialists who prepare information for training AI systems.
Subsequently, experts plan to determine which job functions can be automated with the least risk. After that, a list of positions that could be partially or completely replaced by artificial intelligence will be compiled.
"Artificial intelligence only performs well in certain standard tasks. However, as a rule, a person does not perform just one function but a whole range of tasks. Yes, some routine functions could be removed, thereby reducing the workload, but there are no specific forecasts yet as to who exactly could be cut," he noted.
The Vice-Minister also confirmed that the development of AI will lead to the optimisation of the state apparatus.
"Undoubtedly, AI will automate more and more processes and may indirectly contribute to the optimisation of the state apparatus," said Mun.
At the same time, he emphasised that technology will not only eliminate a number of professions but will also create new ones. In particular, he named a profession that, in his opinion, will remain in demand.
"Programmers are not afraid of AI; on the contrary, they use it to improve their efficiency. If previously a programmer could build one website in two weeks, now, with the help of artificial intelligence, it can be done in one day," noted the Vice-Minister.
Earlier, the Samruk-Kazyna fund presented President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev with the neural network SKAI, which became the first digital independent member of the board of directors with voting rights in the region. Later, the digital board member took part in a meeting of the fund, where it presented an analytical report on support for domestic producers.
In turn, Majilis deputy Yekaterina Smyshlyaeva ruled out the possibility of appointing artificial intelligence to government positions. She stated that current legislation does not allow for such a scenario.