AI Model Horus Brings Ancient Egyptian Culture into the Future
In brief
- A coder from Egypt, Assem Sabry, has created an AI model named Horus, inspired by the ancient Egyptian sky god.
- Sabry built this model to address the lack of AI representation in his culture and reduce reliance on dominant American or Chinese models.
- By training Horus using GPUs from platforms like Google Colab and open-source datasets, he achieved a significant milestone: over 800 downloads in just one week on Hugging Face.
- The challenge Sabry highlights is not unique to Egypt.
- Many languages worldwide are underrepresented in AI, with English dominating due to the way models are trained and industry economics.
- A study by Aliya Bhatia found that non-standard languages face neglect from Big Tech, which prioritizes English for commercial reasons.
- This imbalance has long hindered diversity in AI capabilities.
- However, recent advancements-like open-source tools and local AI initiatives-are creating opportunities for underrepresented languages.
- Sabry notes the progress: "Two years ago, AI wasn’t as good, and LLMs weren’t open-source." Now, with more accessible resources, developers like Sabry are building models tailored to their cultures.
- While challenges remain, including infrastructure and funding barriers, the rise of localized AI efforts, such as Horus and others around the world, signals a promising shift toward greater diversity in artificial intelligence.
Terms in this brief
- GPUs
- Graphics Processing Units — specialized computer chips designed to handle complex calculations quickly, often used in training AI models. Sabry used GPUs from platforms like Google Colab to train his model Horus.
- Hugging Face
- A platform where developers share machine learning models and datasets. Sabry's model Horus was downloaded over 800 times in just one week on Hugging Face, showing its popularity.
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