UW Alumnus to Discuss Building AI Tools for Newsrooms in Kazakhstan Aug. 10

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more important in the U.S., but its impact is being felt around the world as well, even in the field of journalism.

University of Wyoming alumnus Askhat Yerkimbay will present "Building AI Tools for Newsrooms: Lessons from Kazakhstan" at noon Monday, Aug. 10, in the Wyoming Union's East Ballroom.

Yerkimbay will discuss findings from "Rapid Media Mapping of Kazakh-Language Regional Media," a study he conducted for Internews, as well as preliminary results from his work helping small independent newsrooms in Kazakhstan adopt AI tools.

"While ChatGPT was one of the fastest-rising search terms in Kazakhstan, technology and artificial intelligence were almost entirely absent from the participating newsrooms' published coverage," Yerkimbay says. "The audience got there before the newsroom did."

After completing the research, Yerkimbay developed affordable AI tools for small independent newsrooms in Kazakhstan to build their own systems.

His presentation will examine what happens when AI tools developed primarily in English are introduced into newsrooms that publish in Kazakh. Although Kazakh has about 13 million speakers, it's commonly classified as a low-resource language because relatively little Kazakh-language material was collected from the internet to train AI systems.

The presentation also will address:

-- Why a clear editorial brief can matter more than the AI model.

-- Why cost must be treated as a design constraint for newsrooms whose primary challenges include funding and equipment.

-- Why a disclaimer alone is not an adequate safeguard for AI-generated imagery, based on lessons from an unsuccessful project.

Lunch from Jimmy John's will be provided for the first 25 attendees.

Yerkimbay received his master's degree in communication from the UW Department of Communication and Journalism in 2013. He is now a senior lecturer at SDU University outside of Almaty, Kazakhstan.

"This isn't a first visit. It's a return," he says. "Wyoming taught me how to cover a place with a lot of distance and not many people in it, which describes Kazakhstan fairly well."

Yerkimbay also helped the Department of Communication and Journalism with its cooperative agreements with Kazakh National University and SDU University. SDU teaches journalism in both Kazakh and English, placing it at the intersection of language, journalism and emerging technology.

For more information, contact Cindy Price Schultz at [email protected].