A packed hall in Baghdad for the D.T.I Y.O.U.T.H conference

D.T.I stands for Digital Transformation Initiative, and the summit is the largest of its kind in Iraq. KAPITA Business Hub convened it with Sippar for Digital Economic and Sustainable Development, under the patronage of the Prime Minister's Office and with the Office of the President represented, alongside the Communications and Media Commission, Asiacell, EarthLink, Qi and the World Summit Awards. More than eight thousand people came over the two days, and KAPITA signed a memorandum with the CMC there to start a national digital transformation programme. KAPITA brought Tarry Singh in to speak.

The trip began at Schiphol on 19 July 2024. By the evening of the 20th the exhibition hall in Baghdad was full. White chairs ran back further than one frame could hold, red lanyards on most necks, coloured banners strung from the ceiling. On the podium stood a bank of about a dozen television microphones. Over the stage, in pixel-block lettering, D.T.I Y.O.U.T.H. Along the stage front, the words Youth-Powered.

The talk was Theory of M², Achieving 100x Scale with Gen AI. It started with work itself. One person, one task, before 1800. A Ford assembly line worker in the last century holding four. The 10x engineer of the 2000s carrying architecture, security, DevOps, testing and team leadership at once. Then the turn: M² is human plus machine, and the numbers came with it. A coding task finished in less than half the time with GitHub Copilot. A graphic design for $0.08 against $150 of human labour. AI training costs falling about 70 per cent a year.

Three moats closed the argument. Find a really hard problem to solve. Small data will be king. An AI system designed for explainability from the ground up will still be standing once the hype wave has taken its victims. The lab put its own work behind that: EarthScan, the oil and gas venture past a million dollars of revenue; GreenScan on alternative energy, then on track to raise about six million; Glimpse AI on generative product design for manufacturers; and Hominis, foundational research with European universities and Nvidia.

The programme ran wider than one talk. A session on artificial intelligence and cyber security put Mustafa Noor Aldeen, CEO of Acksession, on the main screen. KAPITA organised. Asiacell and EarthLink were the strategic partners, and the Iraqi state emblem repeated across the sponsor wall alongside them. On 22 July there was a meeting at Dutch diplomatic premises in Baghdad, four people photographed under the official portrait of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima. That evening, a reception on a lawn of standing tables under the palms.