The future of artificial intelligence in the Middle East hinges on solving its "inclusion" problem, according to Houda Bouamor, a leading expert in Arabic Natural Language Processing (NLP) and an associate teaching professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q). Most AI models are trained on formal, literary Arabic, which leaves them unable to understand the region's many spoken dialects. Furthermore, Arabic’s complex morphology creates a level of nuance that English-centric models are not designed to handle. Boumor argues this is not just a technical issue: "It’s about inclusion and ...