Saudi SDAIA Signs MoU with NAVER LABS and NAVER CLOUD to Develop Arabic Large Language Model 

The MoU was formalized during the third Global AI Summit (GAIN) in Riyadh. (SPA)
The MoU was formalized during the third Global AI Summit (GAIN) in Riyadh. (SPA)
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Saudi SDAIA Signs MoU with NAVER LABS and NAVER CLOUD to Develop Arabic Large Language Model 

The MoU was formalized during the third Global AI Summit (GAIN) in Riyadh. (SPA)
The MoU was formalized during the third Global AI Summit (GAIN) in Riyadh. (SPA)

The Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) signed on Tuesday a MoU with NAVER LABS and NAVER CLOUD to design an advanced language model for Arabic and its applications.

The MoU was formalized during the third Global AI Summit (GAIN) in Riyadh. It was signed on behalf of SDAIA by National Information Center Director Dr. Esam Alwagait, while Dr. Sangok Seok and Dr. Yoon Kim represented NAVER CLOUD and Dr. Choi Soo-Yeon represented NAVER Corporation.

The signing was hosted by SDAIA President Dr. Abdullah Al-Ghamdi and South Korea’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Choi-Byung- Huyk.

The partnership aims to employ the latest technical developments related to developing an Arabic language model to provide data-center solutions and services, in addition to participating in the cloud platform for digital transformation solutions.

Through a set of applications that use AI algorithms, SDAIA is focusing on boosting the position of the Arabic language in the field of AI.

The authority, in cooperation with the King Salman Global Academy for the Arabic Language, recently prepared a dictionary of data and AI to collect the most important technical terms and provide brief and simplified definitions in both Arabic and English.

SDAIA also prepared the "Your Voice" application, which enables the conversion of speech into text via a voice recognition feature in classical Arabic and local dialects, which can be used to record minutes of meetings and build interactive audio systems.

During the second Global AI Summit held in 2022, SDAIA launched the "ALLaM" application to serve the Arabic language and improve language models using the application in various fields, including: developing a model capable of writing and understanding Arabic poetry, developing an AI model capable of accurately parsing Arabic sentences, and developing a model that helps children learn the Arabic language in a fun and effective way.



Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)

Thousands of tourists, pagans, druids and people simply yearning for the promise of spring marked the dawn of the shortest day of the year at the ancient Stonehenge monument on Saturday.

Revelers cheered and beat drums as the sun rose at 8:09 a.m. (0809 GMT) over the giant standing stones on the winter solstice — the shortest day and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. No one could see the sun through the low winter cloud, but that did not deter a flurry of drumming, chanting and singing as dawn broke.

There will be less than eight hours of daylight in England on Saturday — but after that, the days get longer until the summer solstice in June.

The solstices are the only occasions when visitors can go right up to the stones at Stonehenge, and thousands are willing to rise before dawn to soak up the atmosphere.

The stone circle, whose giant pillars each took 1,000 people to move, was erected starting about 5,000 years ago by a sun-worshiping Neolithic culture, according to The AP. Its full purpose is still debated: Was it a temple, a solar calculator, a cemetery, or some combination of all three?

In a paper published in the journal Archaeology International, researchers from University College London and Aberystwyth University said the site on Salisbury Plain, about 128 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of London, may have had political as well as spiritual significance.

That follows from the recent discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones — the unique stone lying flat at the center of the monument, dubbed the “altar stone” — originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles north of the site. Some of the other stones were brought from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) to the west,

Lead author Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology said the geographical diversity suggests Stonehenge may have served as a “monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”