We often hear that "English models are good enough" because they can translate on the fly. This is a dangerous misconception for mission-critical applications. Translation layers introduce latency, lose nuance, and most importantly, import cultural bias.
Cultural Hallucinations
When a model "thinks" in English and translates to Arabic, it imports Western cultural biases and reasoning patterns that may not align with local context. Native pre-training grounds the model in the region's literature, history, and values.
The Reasoning Gap
The Path to AGI in MENA
True Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) for the Middle East cannot be a wrapper around a California-based API. It requires:
- Sovereign Compute: Infrastructure located in the region.
- Native Data: Training on digitization of local libraries and archives.
- Value Alignment: RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback) performed by local experts, not outsourced workers.
At MX4, we are building this future today with the Atlas platform.