KSA to train 300,000 school kids in AI; and more Middle East AI News
Carrington Malin
??????????????????? ?????? ???? ????-?????????? ??????????????????????? ???????? ???? ???????? | CEO Advisor | Artificial Intelligence | Tech Marketing | GTM strategy | Board Advisor
Welcome to Middle East AI News!
Good day! This week I'm sharing my full news digest. If you'd like to receive this news digest in your email inbox earlier in the day than this, get access to the full archive of past newsletters, view in-depth articles or receive the daily Middle East AI News Minute podcast, sign-up here: www.middleeastainews.com
The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority announced its biggest education initiative to-date this week, involving 300,000 school students in the National Olympiad for Programming and Artificial Intelligence.
Meanwhile, there were a couple of interesting VC deals this week. Firstly, Hala Ventures and Wa’ed Ventures investment in Egyptian AI voice startup Intella, which brings another foreign AI developer into the Kingdom. Also SVC’s funding of IMPACT46’s Fund III, to allow the tech fund to support late-growth stage and pre-IPO ventures.
And, TII in Abu Dhabi has announced FalconLite2, a resource-light version of the Falcon40B large language model open-sourced earlier this year.
Lastly, apologies to those that were looking forward to Middle East AI News LIVE today. I had to postpone this until next week and will post details in advance.
/Carrington
Middle East AI News – 05-Oct-23
Education
Saudi to train 300,000 school students in AI
#Saudi #olympiad - Saudi Arabia will train 300,000 school students in artificial intelligence, as part of the preparation for the National Olympiad for Programming and Artificial Intelligence, which will take place in January 2024. The olympiad is organised by the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA), in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Mawhiba. (Middle East AI News)
#Saudi #education - Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) has launched a new interactive “Data and AI Radar” app on its website, with the aim of providing users continuous updates on the latest data and AI technologies. (Maal)
#Qatar #training - Doha-based MENA Executive Training has just introduced a new 'Artificial Intelligence Governance Professional' course, beginning in November. The two-day course is split into six modules, and can be delivered online or in-person. (MENA Executive Training)
Funding
#Saudi #funding - Saudi Venture Capital (SVC) has announced a $30 million investment in IMPACT46's Fund III, allowing the tech fund to invest in more Saudi growth-stage and pre-IPO ventures. (Zawya)
#Egypt #funding - Egyptian AI voice startup Intella has closed a $3.4 million Pre-Series A funding round, led by Saudi venture capital firms HALA Ventures and Wa’ed Ventures, an Aramco company. The new funding will fuel Intella’s expansion into the Saudi market. (BusinessWire)
LLMs
#UAE #LLMs - Abu Dhabi's Technology Innovation Institute (TII) has released FalconLite2, a highly optimised version of the Falcon40B language model that has been fine-tuned to process long input sequences. This fine-tuned model can process up to 24K input tokens (or approximately 18K words) on a single AWS g5.12x instance. (LinkedIn)
Crisis Response
#UAE #emergency - Abu Dhabi big data analytics powerhouse, Presight, has been awarded a contract by The National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority (NCEMA) - to develop a platform for an AI-driven emergency response, for use in humanitarian, medical, emergency and crisis situations. (Emirates News Agency)
National Development
#Egypt #digitisation - The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Microsoft, have signed an agreement to advance sustainable development and foster digital innovation in Egypt. (UNDP)
领英推荐
Facial Recognition
#Jordan #facialrecognition - The Municipality of Greater Amman plans to use facial recognition technology starting next year. The government aims to use facial recognition to help to improve security, reduce crime, and make the Capital more efficient. (Jordan News)
GenAI
#Saudi #GenAI - Saudia, the national airline of Saudi Arabia, has revealed that its generative AI virtual assistant, will enable guests to complete the entire transaction of booking a flight by the end of the year. The plan was announced as part of the airlines rebranding announcement. (Yahoo!)
AI Opinion
#Saudi #digitisation - 53 percent of IT decision makers in Saudi Arabia in a survey, conducted by Censuswide on behalf of Juniper Networks, indicated that the driving factor for digital transformation within their organisations is benchmarking competitors and peers performing better at digitisation. (Zawya)
#GCC #digitisation - A new study from IT infrastructure services provider Kyndryl, conducted by IDC, revealed that 70% of surveyed Chief Information Officers within financial institutions in the GCC plan on changing their organisations into a digital business model to ensure future business resilience. (Intelligent CIO)
#UAE #innovation - 63% of UAE CIOs, IT decision makers, and developers surveyed by Cisco plan to invest on average 14% of annual revenue in innovation projects over the next 12 months. The findings were part of the Cisco State of Global Innovation Report 2023. (Zawya)
NextGen FDI
#UAE #FDI - Global tech solutions provider Endava has joined the Ministry of Economy’s NextGen FDI programme, which it will use to extend its footprint in the UAE. It now plans to build on its existing team and relocate senior leadership and technical teams to the country. (Zawya)
AI Diplomacy
#Saudi #Pakistan #innovation - Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have signed an M.O.U, to expand bilateral cooperation in communications and I.T., by accelerating digital transformation, promoting innovation, and developing digital infrastructure. The two countries will also explore funding for entrepreneurs and enterprises. (SPA)
Video of the week
ATHKA
Watch: Introduction to ATHKA (Arabic)
The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) announced the National Olympiad for Programming and Artificial Intelligence (ATHKA) this week and its plan to help educate 300,000 school children in AI and data.
Watch the video (60 seconds)
???Thanks for reading this week's newsletter!
???How was it? Questions? Thoughts? Please do leave a comment below!
If you'd like to receive?Middle East AI News?every week, please?Subscribe?here!
If you want to reach out to me you're welcome to send me a message?via Linkedin?or an email to?[email protected]
Growth Manager - Driving Expotential Growth Through Strategic Leadership and Innovation
1 年Very Outstanding performance for trained 3 lakhs school kids at Middle East Al News
Theoretical Futurist as seen on CNN/BBC/Bloomberg. Future Readiness Score(FRS) Creator. Author of "Undisrupted", Starring in "The Futurist" on PrimeVideo. High Energy Keynote Speaker, Unconventional Thinker
1 年Love it. I said this 3 years ago https://www.arabnews.com/node/1619106/saudi-arabia
Administration | Production Engineering
1 年300,000 school-age children studying AI is a significant project, the multiplication will be exponential, soon their schools have studied AI as they study other common subjects and this ensures the survival of their people in an increasingly technological world, the union between AI systems and people will make us achieve the productivity necessary to preserve the planet earth and all nations need to follow this example, Congratulations!
Entrepreneur, CEO, Founder, Strategist, Networker, SALCO International. We provide services and solutions that help our clients achieve maximum return on their business operations.
1 年Thanks, Carrington Malin. As you can see, the Saudi government is strategically establishing programs and initiatives for its long- and short-term objectives ( i.e. KSA 2030 vision). The launching of the Human Capability Development Program (HCDP) is not accidental but a carefully crafted program. HRH Crown Prince Mohammed quoted saying “The Human Capability Development Program represents a national strategy to enhance the competitiveness of national human capabilities locally and globally to be ready for the current and future labor market with capabilities and ambitions that compete with the world, and that is through instilling and promoting values, developing basic and future skills, and developing knowledge,” I believe that this is just the beginning, and we can expect to see more national and even similar global plans/programs that will compete with others worldwide.
Operations ??? Financial Advisory ??? Research
1 年An amazing initiative by the Saudi Government; just WOW!!! Nothing beats training the NEXT generation on the importance of technology and how it would continue to shape our lives, now and in future. ??????.