In Uzbekistan, 2,141 positions in the executive branch will be cut by November 1, 2025, due to the introduction of artificial intelligence technologies. The corresponding decree was signed by the country’s president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, and the document was published in the National Legislation Database.
According to the decree, the largest number of cuts will occur in the State Tax Committee (498 positions), the Ministry of Water Resources (224), the Ministry of Agriculture (200), the Ministry of Justice (197), the Ministry of Ecology (176), and the Ministry of Employment and Poverty Reduction (163).
In addition, the number of deputy heads in state committees, agencies, and inspectorates will be reduced: in some structures, the number of deputies will decrease from 11 to 7, from 12 to 6, and from 13 to 7, respectively.
The Ministry of Employment and the Federation of Trade Unions have been instructed to assist dismissed employees in finding employment and retraining.
The reform is part of a program to digitally transform public administration. In early 2025, President Mirziyoyev signed a law reforming the civil service system, which provides for the introduction of performance evaluations for civil servants and higher requirements for digital skills.
Earlier, Uzbekistan announced the creation of an Artificial Intelligence Development Alliance, which will coordinate the introduction of AI technologies in various industries and allocate funding for infrastructure development. About $100 million is planned to be allocated for these purposes.
The mass reduction of civil servants reflects the authorities’ policy of optimizing the bureaucratic apparatus and improving management efficiency through digitalization. At the same time, experts note that the success of the reform will depend on the quality of the technologies implemented and the state’s ability to provide social protection and retraining for the workers who are being laid off.
Large language models (LLM), on which ChatGPT and other generative (content-creating) artificial intelligence (AI) tools are based, will never reach the level of human intelligence, believes Jan Lekun, chief scientist of the American Meta in the field of AI.
In his opinion, such models have a very limited understanding of logic and will not be able to reason and plan like a human. In addition, they “do not understand the physical world, do not have permanent memory, are unable to reason in any reasonable sense of the word, and cannot plan … hierarchically,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times.
Lecun argued against relying on LLM development in an effort to create human-level intelligence, as these models can only accurately respond to queries if trained on correct data, and are therefore insecure.
Instead, the expert is developing an entirely new generation of AI systems that he hopes will endow machines with “human” intelligence. However, this task could take a decade to complete, he explained.
Lecun leads a team of about 500 people at Meta’s basic AI research lab. They are working on creating an artificial intelligence that can develop a sense of common sense and study the structure of the world in a similar way to humans. This approach is called “world modeling.”
A strategy session with the participation of experts, officials, MPs and lawyers was the beginning of work on the regulatory field for artificial intelligence (AI), it discussed the paths Ukraine can follow in the field of its legal regulation, said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation Mikhail Fedorov.
“We should not lag behind the rest of the world, but lead the AI trend. It is impossible to talk about a digital state if we do not form a progressive policy in the direction of artificial intelligence and agendu for the world “, – wrote Fedorov in his Telegram channel on Wednesday.
According to him, the use of AI in Ukraine is planned in various spheres, in particular, the Ministry of Digitization is developing a virtual assistant in “Diya”, the task of which is to quickly find answers to users’ questions. In addition, AI will help Gosstat to process and analyze data, added the head of the Ministry of Digitals.
Separately, Fedorov noted the usefulness of AI in military technologies. According to him, artificial intelligence helps to fix the movement of equipment and personnel of the enemy, to shoot down missiles, to more effectively target UAVs, etc.
“We are creating conditions for top international companies dealing with artificial intelligence to come to the Ukrainian market,” Fyodorov added.
The digital space is a “new frontier of fundamental rights”, a new world in which previous rules do not always apply automatically, European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen said.
“Think about children’s rights or consumer protection. But think also about artificial intelligence. Its potential benefits are enormous. But it can also be harmful, for example if it is used to hire and fire employees or to monitor citizens through facial recognition. We need new laws to embody our eternal values in the online world,” the EC chief said Friday in New York at the European Commission’s World Peace & Liberty Award ceremony.
It is an award given since 1965 by the World Bar Association for services to the defense of the rule of law as opposed to the use of force.
According to von der Leyen, Europe is leading the way in creating a legal framework for the digital age.
“We were the first in the world to set rules for digital platforms, and now we are doing the same with artificial intelligence. This means that all companies that want to operate in our market have to meet very high standards. Standards that center on people and their rights,” the President of the European Commission emphasized.
She said the EU is “working with like-minded friends such as Canada and the United States, as well as with Japan, Latin American countries and India, to develop equivalent rules so that technology enhances individual freedom rather than the ability of the state to control us”.
