Government slogans about “digital transformation” and “artificial intelligence” are on the rise, while Iraq suffers from fragile infrastructure, limited digital skills, and frequent data breaches. This article examines the reality of artificial intelligence in Iraq – between lofty promises, limited applications, and painful paradoxes…

For the past two years, artificial intelligence has preoccupied the world. There have been promises of transforming life as we know it, talk of revolutions in education and the job market, speeding up the already fast-paced world, reports warning of millions of job losses, concerns about its impact on creativity and human thinking, hallucinations among users, and even the decline of natural human interaction. 

Across the globe, international, regional, and local conferences and university seminars have been held to discuss AI — and Iraq is no exception. But many of those engaging with the topic are simply following the trend without real understanding. 

At the start of the 21st century, talk of technology and digitisation spread widely, but for many Iraqis, it merely meant introducing computers into government offices and schools. Digital skills among employees and teachers remained extremely limited. Iraqi universities still rely heavily on paper to record student grades, files, and administrative procedures. 

In the last decade, e-governance became the new buzzword — reduced, in many cases, to simply having a website. But in reality, Iraqi government websites — especially those related to security and intelligence — have proven fragile. Many use free domains and have been repeatedly hacked. 

In 2023, Iraq’s Digital Media Centre revealed that personal data from several official websites had been leaked — including hundreds of thousands of entries from the Ministries of Higher Education and Education, and the Federal Service Council — and offered for sale on the dark web. 

The Ministry of Interior also arrested a suspect in Babil Province who had hacked official databases and sold citizens’ personal information via social media. In April 2025, the National Security Service arrested a person responsible for one of the most serious cyberattacks against private companies, leaking around 1,500 gigabytes of sensitive data and selling it multiple times to unknown parties. 

These breaches are not unique to Iraq — but the threat is amplified by AI and deepfakes. In May 2025, the FBI warned of increasing phishing attempts through SMS (smishing) and voice phishing (vishing), which can involve AI-generated voices. The agency cautioned that receiving a text or voice message claiming to be from a US official does not necessarily make it authentic. 

Despite these risks, internet use in Iraq has grown rapidly, even though access remains uneven across different communities and regions. By early 2024, Iraq had around 36.2 million internet users — about 78–79 percent of the population. That marked a sharp rise from around 50 percent in 2020–2021. 

This rate is higher than the Asian continental average (about 74 percent), and indicates that the majority of Iraqis are now online — largely due to affordable smartphones and widespread mobile internet access. 

Yet, despite its oil wealth, Iraq continues to suffer from a chronic electricity crisis, worsened by US sanctions on Iranian gas imports. Every summer, citizens face soaring temperatures approaching 50°C with insufficient electricity to power air conditioning or cooling systems. According to the Ministry of Finance, Iraq spent around 10.45 trillion Iraqi dinars (about 8 billion US Dollars) on the electricity sector in 2024 — including both operational and investment costs — without solving the issue. 

In the face of ongoing data breaches, weak electricity infrastructure, and slow internet, Iraqi officials continue to speak of a coming AI revolution in state institutions and universities. But what is the truth behind these declarations? 

The reality of artificial intelligence in Iraq 

As global discussions around artificial intelligence gained momentum, several Arab countries launched national AI strategies. Egypt, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates led the way in 2019, followed by Algeria and Saudi Arabia in 2020, Tunisia in 2021, Jordan in 2022 — and finally Iraq in 2023. 

That same year, Iraq announced the establishment of its Advisory Office for Artificial Intelligence, with the stated goal of using technology to serve different segments of society. According to the office, the national strategy is based on a comprehensive vision to make the world a better place — by improving healthcare, protecting the environment, and enhancing safety and security. 

The office also stated that the development of this strategy would rely on active participation from the industrial, research, and civil sectors, with a focus on ethical and sustainable data production and analysis. 

It further claimed to prioritise the development of Iraq’s research and educational infrastructure in the AI field, through the creation of research centres, support for training and education, capacity-building for local specialists, support for companies, investment in innovation, and improving students’ AI skills. 

The advisory website also mentions the use of smart systems to monitor water quality and forecast environmental issues — enhancing resource distribution and reducing waste amid climate and environmental challenges. 

Additionally, Iraq’s Ministry of Communications launched the country’s first national AI platform in partnership with the National Data Centre. The platform includes an open data library, Arabic language models, and a safe testing environment for experimenting with AI solutions. 

Despite all this, Iraq remains among the least developed countries in AI and digital transformation. Most specialists agree that Iraq is still in the very early stages. Many ministries — including some vital ones — struggle to keep up with digital advancements, due to lack of expertise and weak electronic infrastructure. 

In late 2024, the secretary of Iraq’s Supreme Committee for Artificial Intelligence, Dr. Ammar Hussein, announced that Iraq had reached the 77th place globally, 9th among Arab countries, in the Global AI Index. This was seen as progress, given that Iraq had not appeared in the rankings just two years earlier. 

Hussein argued that pursuing automation, digital transformation, and centralised data collection at the National Data Centre would improve Iraq’s ranking in the coming years. Prime Minister Muhammad Shiaa al-Sudani also approved a new initiative aimed at attracting skilled professionals from abroad and training 100 “digital leaders” in a first phase, with the help of international experts. 

Still, despite all these announcements and promises, Iraq ranked 107th globally in the 2024 Government AI Readiness Index — scoring 40.91 points, far below the Middle East and North Africa average of 48.50. The UAE led the region with 75.66 points, ranking among the global top 15, followed by Israel and Saudi Arabia. 

AI in education: Ambitions, challenges, and disparities 

At the university level, the University of Baghdad and Al-Nahrain University have established labs dedicated to developing AI technologies. Their research teams are working on projects such as machine translation, Arabic text analysis, and machine learning applications in agriculture. 

In May 2024, Iraq’s Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Naeem Al-Aboudi, revealed plans to establish a specialised College of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Baghdad, along with similar initiatives in private universities. 

In July 2024, the office of the prime minister’s advisor, Muhammad Shiaa al-Sudani, announced the introduction of AI into school curricula. Al-Sudani promoted the slogan “Artificial intelligence is the path to the global job market” at the Davos conference. 

Raghad Al-Shabandar, head of AI applications at the government advisory office, explained that their projects focus on intelligent water management through AI — by building smart regulators on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. These are expected to help address water pollution, reduce salinity intrusion, and alleviate water scarcity. She also noted the organisation of workshops and conferences in government institutions, along with public awareness campaigns to highlight the risks of AI. 

That same month, the College of Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Mosul announced the launch of a new AI department starting in the 2024–2025 academic year. It will join other departments including Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics and Informatics, Operations Research, Cybersecurity, and Networking. 

In March 2025, the American University of Iraq – Sulaimani held training sessions to equip schoolteachers with AI tools aimed at improving teaching and evaluation across all education levels. 

In April, the minister chaired a meeting to follow up on the establishment of the Colleges of Excellence and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Baghdad and called for announcing their opening dates in preparation for the 2025–2026 academic year. 

The College of Excellence is expected to include programmes in applied information sciences, business administration, e-commerce, accounting, banking, sociology, philosophy, and data science. The AI college will offer programmes and departments focused on engineering applications, biomedical technologies, and data. 

In May, the Ministry of Higher Education announced that Iraqi universities had ranked second among Arab countries in the number of AI research papers published and indexed in the Scopus database in 2024. That same month, the minister called for establishing a joint Iraqi–Chinese university specialising in artificial intelligence, during a meeting with the Chinese ambassador in Baghdad. 

The College of Media at the Iraqi University also introduced a new department for AI journalism, aimed at keeping pace with modern technologies, offering courses in digital media literacy, and addressing deepfakes and misinformation. 

In June, the Middle Technical University — whose colleges and institutes are based in Baghdad, Diyala, Anbar, Wasit, and Salah al-Din — announced it would soon open a College of Artificial Intelligence within its Electrical Technical College in the Dora district of Baghdad. The college will initially have two departments: Cybersecurity and AI, with a third department for unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) to be added later. 

Among private universities, the American University of Baghdad received a 2.1 million US Dollar grant to support Iraq’s national education strategy. As part of this grant, the university launched the Innovation Lab for Digital Intelligence and Digital Engineering at its College of Engineering. The lab is expected to contribute not only to developing the university’s AI curriculum but also to shaping national policy in this sector. 

The Iraq Educational AI Platform also launched free training programmes in artificial intelligence. 

Between slogans and substance: Is Iraq ready for AI? 

Amid talk of progress, high school teachers in Iraq face a fundamental problem: most are not proficient in using basic software such as Microsoft Word. At the same time, university professors who attend AI conferences are confronted with a stark absence of infrastructure that would allow for practical implementation — even as these events highlight AI’s role in fields like medicine and administration. 

In many cases, AI discourse boils down to casually using ChatGPT, without considering the security risks related to data leaks or foreign technological dominance — a serious concern in today’s information-driven world, where those who control data rule the world. 

At the College of Mechanical Engineering at Wasit University, AI courses were purely theoretical, according to one student. There were no practical lectures due to outdated computers incapable of running the Python programming language. Students were taught AI concepts without learning Python — a core tool — which made understanding the material difficult. 

By contrast, students at the Electromechanical Engineering Department at the University of Technology reported that they received comprehensive lessons in automation, control systems, machine learning, and artificial neural networks. 

In this context, the need is growing to counter the misuse of AI for academic cheating and plagiarism, as well as its negative impact on research quality and originality. 

Back in the early 2000s, computer science was taught only in elite Iraqi schools — like Baghdad College High School and schools for gifted students — and was limited to the basics of Visual Basic. 

From my own experience as a medical student at Cairo University in 2009, I recall many outstanding students struggling to pass a computer science exam that simply required typing in Microsoft Word and knowing basic computer functions. One high-achieving student almost broke down after failing the test and seriously considered paying someone to take it on his behalf — saying it was unfair to lose an academic year over a non-essential subject. 

This vividly illustrates the poor state of computer education in most Arab countries. 

Despite government announcements about significant advances in AI, Iraq’s official websites remain vulnerable to repeated and serious cyberattacks. Most educational curricula are still outdated, and teachers continue to lack basic digital skills — especially in colleges of humanities. 

Some government statements seem to be little more than window dressing, attempts to keep up with the global “trend,” or ways to attract foreign funding linked to the AI sector — creating yet another avenue for corruption. 

Of course, Iraq is not expected to reinvent the wheel — no country today is creating AI from scratch. What is needed is the effective adoption of AI applications across various sectors. 

It is natural that AI would have a stronger presence in engineering and technology faculties, while other faculties might focus on using these technologies and understanding their benefits and risks. 

However, relying on ready-made technologies comes with serious risks — such as Iraq’s data being leaked, and the loss of informational sovereignty by tying everything to applications based in the United States or China.