A Novel · First 2020 · ICL 2021
Mortal Past
Tarek Gara
ت
Multilingual AI quality · GenAI research · Cyber politics
Tarek Gara.
I work in the seam where language meets machine.
By day I lead multilingual AI quality at Innodata across Arabic, Hebrew, and English. By evening I'm finishing an MA in Cyber Politics & Government at TAU, building Folio, and slowly turning a novella into a novel.
Currently
what's holding my attention this week- Building
- Folio, the public research workspace
- Writing
- Deadly Sand, the sequel to Mortal Past
- Shipping
- Tayyar’s first public methodology page
- Studying
- the political life of digital infrastructure at TAU
- Editing
- The Loop, monthly, before it lands here
Writing
essays I'd write whether anyone read them — The Loop is the mirror Feb 2026 Feb 2026 Jan 2026 Dec 2025
Why AI thinks in English and forgets in Arabic
On tokenization, context windows, and what gets lost when Semitic languages are treated as bloated data.
How AI killed the soul of the world's favorite language-learning app
On Duolingo's pivot from learning to engagement, and what 850 days of streaks failed to teach me.
The sanitization of intelligence
On the alignment tax, corporate risk-aversion, and what "safe" AI gives up on its way to being safe.
Stack drift: how growing products forget their own story
On the moment a product still works but its logic stops cohering.
Library
five books — three out, two still arguing with mePoetry · 2023
Crescent Moons
Tarek Gara
☾
Poetry · 2024
Nonperson
Tarek Gara
א
Forthcoming · A Novel
Deadly Sand
Tarek Gara
II
Forthcoming · A Novel
My Name is Runner
Tarek Gara
→
Also: The Flag Bearers, a 2021 short story. Available if you write asking.
Projects
the ventures — Folio, Itaha, Mawrid Folio
Publicly available · free tier An integrity-first research workspace for academics. Discover the literature, write with cited AI grounded in your own sources, and prove the work is yours. Free to start; paid plans for deeper work.
Itaha إتاحة
Operating A non-profit advancing digital accessibility within the Arab community in Israel. Driving awareness, advocating for inclusive design, and championing equal access to online resources for people with disabilities.
Mawrid Research مورد
Closed to new projects A small editorial and research studio for academic work in Arabic, Hebrew, and English — currently not accepting new projects. Existing engagements continue.
Playgrounds
hosted tools, research demos, methodologies — things to poke at- Tayyar تيار A hosted web app that positions MENA political actors (parties, politicians) and texts (manifestos, speeches, articles, bills, user-pasted prose) on a political compass, with a regional map view and methodology-transparent reasoning. Built for researchers and academics — the methodology is the product, not a footnote. Building
- Thagrah ثغرة An open evaluation harness for adversarial prompts in Arabic. Surfaces the safety gaps multilingual AI inherits when its alignment work is overwhelmingly English. Building
- Espani A post-Duolingo approach to learning Spanish — comprehensible input from day one, spaced repetition that doesn't gamify forgetting, a streak that doesn't punish a missed day. Exploring
- Resmus Tooling around Arabic research workflows. Exploring
- Waypoint An AI travel companion. Early prototype. Private
- Zabbit On-demand marketplace for home and business repairs. Private
About.
From Jatt. Working in the gap between language and machine. A thriller, two poetry collections, and a non-profit; the story is longer than that.
Read the full versionA letter, once a month, when there is something worth saying.
Essays land here first, then I republish them as The Loop on LinkedIn. Long enough to be worth opening; short enough to finish. No funnels, no tracking pixels.
Follow The Loop
About 385 readers between here and there. An RSS feed shows up the moment the first canonical essay lands.