Forum for authors discusses Arabic Language and Artificial Intelligence

The Qatari Forum for Authors recently held symposium titled ‘Arabic Language and Artificial Intelligence: Reality Challenges and Future Prospects’ at the headquarters of the Ministry of Culture and Sports.
The symposium came as part of a campaign launched by the Forum last December in cooperation with the Qatar National Commission for Education, Culture and Science and in line with the theme of the celebration of the International Day of the Arabic Language for 2019, where the Unesco chose the theme of the festive ‘Arabic language and artificial intelligence’.
Addressing the Forum, Director General of the Qatari Forum for Authors, Mariam Yassin Al Hammadi, said: “The Arabic language faces challenges, especially in a time of globalization and cultural openness that affected them.”
“This is something that we must reinforce and preserve, which is what the Qatari Forum seeks hand in hand with the Qatar National Commission for Education, Culture and Science  to achieve, as a campaign to celebrate the Arabic language was launched on December 18, 2019.”
She added that the symposium also reflects the spirit of the Law on the Protection of the Arabic Language, and to achieve  Qatar National Vision 2030 to preserve the linguistic identity of the state as stipulated in the country’s constitution.
Al Hammadi said that the campaign activities will continue until next March within the framework of celebrating the Arabic language and within the executive programs of the memorandum of understanding that was signed in September 2019.
Dr. Karim Darwish, Senior Researcher at the Arabic Language Technologies Group (ALT) at the Qatar Institute for Computing Research, spoke about the concept of artificial intelligence and its importance in developing the Arabic language in globalisation era.
He also discussed the latest technologies used by the Qatar Computing Research Institute for the automatic processing of the Arabic language.