Business leaders Mikhail Lomtadze, co-founder of Kaspi.kz, and Freedom Holding Corp. CEO Timur Turlov called on young artificial intelligence innovators to focus on solving real human problems, embrace lifelong learning and build global partnerships as they addressed participants of the 2026 International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (IOAI) in Astana, reports a Qazinform News Agency correspondent.
Welcoming students from more than 100 countries, Lomtadze praised Kazakhstan's efforts to advance artificial intelligence and digital transformation, thanking President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev for supporting the country's AI agenda. Addressing the young competitors, he posed a question about the future role of humans in an AI-driven world.
"If machines can write the code, train models or complete different tasks, what will make you guys special?" Lomtadze asked. "Your real advantage is that you are human, your values and your ability to decide what is right and what is wrong... It's your decision whether the technology you create will improve somebody's life." Sharing Kaspi.kz's experience, he said the company's mission is to improve people's lives, noting that more than 25 million people in Kazakhstan and Türkiye use its services.
He added that Kaspi recently launched a Kazakhstan-built personal AI system developed by a team of around 2,000 data scientists, engineers and product developers. Lomtadze encouraged participants to begin every innovation with a real human need. "Don't really build the technology and look for the use.
You look for the use case that you are trying to solve and start really with a real human need," he said. He also urged students to "stay curious and humble," build international relationships and "never stop learning," stressing that technology changes rapidly, while the ability to learn remains a lasting competitive advantage.
Freedom Holding Corp. CEO Timur Turlov highlighted the accelerating pace of technological development, saying AI is allowing smaller teams to accomplish what once required large corporations. "Technology itself doesn't perform well. People do. What matters is a person who knows how to work alongside AI.
A human-powered AI is stronger than AI on its own," he said. Turlov said Freedom is investing more than $2 billion in the Freedom AI Supercluster, Kazakhstan's largest sovereign AI data center for artificial intelligence workloads. He added that the company operates seven commercial data centers, is expanding its cloud infrastructure, supports AI laboratories at universities and has provided Kazakhstan's education system with 165,000 licenses for leading AI tools.
According to Turlov, the country's future competitiveness will depend on talent rather than natural resources.