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200 Teams from 17 Nations Seek Innovative Solutions for Arabic Language in Saudi Arabia

The ALLaM Challenge aims to develop AI models capable of writing and understanding Arabic poetry, accurately analyzing grammar, and teaching Arabic to children in an engaging manner. SPA
The ALLaM Challenge aims to develop AI models capable of writing and understanding Arabic poetry, accurately analyzing grammar, and teaching Arabic to children in an engaging manner. SPA
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200 Teams from 17 Nations Seek Innovative Solutions for Arabic Language in Saudi Arabia

The ALLaM Challenge aims to develop AI models capable of writing and understanding Arabic poetry, accurately analyzing grammar, and teaching Arabic to children in an engaging manner. SPA
The ALLaM Challenge aims to develop AI models capable of writing and understanding Arabic poetry, accurately analyzing grammar, and teaching Arabic to children in an engaging manner. SPA

The competition in the ALLaM Challenge has intensified for the second consecutive day, with 200 teams from 17 countries, including Saudi Arabia, showcasing their capabilities in developing innovative solutions, the Saudi Press Agency reported Friday.

The focus is on enhancing large language models (LLMs) and transforming them into real-world AI projects that serve the Arabic language across various sectors.

Overseeing this significant competition, organized by the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) in collaboration with the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming, and Drones, are more than 50 mentors and 40 judges—experts in AI and the Arabic language. They are providing support to participating teams and evaluating projects based on criteria that ensure the sustainability of the proposed solutions.

The ALLaM Challenge aims to develop AI models capable of writing and understanding Arabic poetry, accurately analyzing grammar, and teaching Arabic to children in an engaging manner. This aligns with the Kingdom’s ongoing efforts to support the Arabic language, especially in technological fields, by providing high-quality Arabic data and creating AI models that can effectively handle the language.

This international competition is supported by a technical partnership with IBM and the National Technology Development Program (NTDP), with a total prize pool of SAR 1 million.

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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)
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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.”