Industry experts , policy makers and researchers from Africa, Asia,Europe have met to examine how Francophone countries could develop AI suited to their own languages and institutions.
Cambodia said it needs AI that understands Khmer and respects the country’s culture.
The Cambodian Academy of Digital Technology (CADT) president Seng Sopheap told a FrancoTech roundtable in Phnom Penh on November 14, “Artificial intelligence (AI) tools used in Cambodia should understand Khmer, respect the country’s culture and respond to local needs,”
“For a country like Cambodia, using artificial intelligence is very important, but we have to make sure it understands our language, understands our history and respects our culture,” he said.
“We also need the ability to build AI that responds to our needs,” he added.
Seydina Moussa Ndiaye, director of the FORCE-N programme at Senegal’s Cheikh Hamidou Kane Digital University, illustrated the challenge with a hypothetical example. 
An AI assistant might answer a question in Wolof, a language widely spoken in Senegal, while describing a procedure that applies in another country.
For a Cambodian user, the equivalent would be receiving an answer in fluent Khmer that gives the wrong instructions for accessing a public service.
Ndiaye said AI systems should be evaluated on the language they use, the sources they draw on and the context in which people will use them.
“French can connect our research communities and companies,” he said.
“That cooperation must also support Khmer, Wolof and the other languages of our societies,” he suggested.
Ndiaye proposed that universities and research teams develop language resources together, share computing infrastructure and agree on ways to test their systems.
