Iranian Scholar Urges Developing Domestic AI Platforms to Avoid Western Dependency

IQNA – An Iranian scholar says the country must avoid dependence on Western digital platforms and develop its own frameworks for artificial intelligence and digital governance.

Hojat-ol-Islam Abdolhossein Khosropanah, secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, made the remarks at a scientific session titled “Defining a Jurisprudential Framework for the Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence in Digital Governance.”

“We are obliged not to become slaves of others and the Westerners,” he said. “We must not fall behind in the field of digital platforms.”

Khosropanah described digital governance as the management of technologies, software and digital data.
He distinguished that from “digitalized governance,” meaning the use of modern information technologies across economic, political and social governance.

On AI’s capabilities, he said the technology now converts images and text into numbers and can learn.
“But there must be a human who produces the hardware and software and writes the algorithms,” he said. “The creator of this machine is a human.”

He noted efficiency gains. “What once took a long time — finding a narration, for example — can now be done in moments,” he said. “How reliable it is depends on how correct the algorithms and the data are.”

Khosropanah cautioned against full trust in AI. “At present, we cannot rely on artificial intelligence one hundred percent,” he said. “We must still refer back to books.”

He raised jurisprudential questions about AI’s status. “Is artificial intelligence conscious? Is it free to choose? It is not rational or morally responsible. Humans have given it data and it acts on those data,” he said.

He added that no matter how advanced it becomes, AI “does not have consciousness or choice” and “cannot be a caliph of God” or lead prayers. He also argued that AI cannot serve as a legal agent if jurisprudence requires an agent to be rational and free.

He returned to his call for national capacity. “We must prepare what we can of strength,” he said, citing religious and legal principles as a basis for building domestic platforms. “In the past they attacked borders to impose their culture. Now they do it through platforms.”

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