Aramco Continues Progress in Digital Transformation with SAP Strategic Alliance

Aramco announced a strategic alliance with SAP Saudi Arabia to expand the digitalization of its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. (Aramco)
Aramco announced a strategic alliance with SAP Saudi Arabia to expand the digitalization of its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. (Aramco)
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Aramco Continues Progress in Digital Transformation with SAP Strategic Alliance

Aramco announced a strategic alliance with SAP Saudi Arabia to expand the digitalization of its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. (Aramco)
Aramco announced a strategic alliance with SAP Saudi Arabia to expand the digitalization of its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. (Aramco)

Aramco announced on Monday a strategic alliance with SAP Saudi Arabia to expand the digitalization of its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.

The agreement with SAP is another step in Aramco’s digital transformation journey, paving the way for further integration of new technologies in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

The SAP ERP system will deepen the deployment of innovative IR4.0 technologies including cloud-based services, embedded analytics, mobility, machine learning, artificial intelligence, advanced analytics and Internet-of-Things solutions.

By extending the strategic alliance with SAP Saudi Arabia, Aramco’s contribution to the in-Kingdom business ecosystem will be enhanced through job creation, training and by localizing supplier services and R&D. In addition to enabling greater efficiencies, SAP’s Data Center in Saudi Arabia will offer new cloud solutions to Aramco and other companies.

Ahmad A. Al Sa'adi, Aramco Senior Vice-President of Technical Services, said: “We are committed to our digital transformation program, which is improving our ability to meet the needs of our customers around the world and setting a new standard for technology deployment in our industry.”

“Technologies and solutions within digital transformation initiatives will touch all facets of our operations. This is just one more example of how we are applying best practice in this space and embracing 4IR solutions. It is an important milestone on our digital journey and also contributes to our iktva target.”

Luka Mucic, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Chief Financial Officer, said: “In 23 years of strong collaboration, Aramco and SAP have become strategic partners. With numerous co-innovation initiatives, we have jointly introduced oil and gas best practices, enhanced business operations, and expanded the horizon of opportunities in this industry.”

“Aramco has taken the next step on their digital transformation journey and towards becoming an Intelligent Enterprise, implementing S/4 HANA and the Business Technology Platform amongst others.”

SAP’s new platform will serve the entire Aramco organization, supporting the Company’s Digital Transformation Program and enabling new processes for a majority of the company’s enterprise applications and solutions. The new architecture leverages emerging technologies that will propel Aramco into a new era of Intelligent Enterprise and benefits include faster processing, intuitive user experience, real-time reporting, integration with cloud solutions and system consolidation, which reduces total cost of ownership.



Firms and Researchers at Odds over Superhuman AI

Three-quarters of respondents to a survey by the US-based Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence agreed that 'scaling up' LLMs was unlikely to produce artificial general intelligence. Joe Klamar / AFP/File
Three-quarters of respondents to a survey by the US-based Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence agreed that 'scaling up' LLMs was unlikely to produce artificial general intelligence. Joe Klamar / AFP/File
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Firms and Researchers at Odds over Superhuman AI

Three-quarters of respondents to a survey by the US-based Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence agreed that 'scaling up' LLMs was unlikely to produce artificial general intelligence. Joe Klamar / AFP/File
Three-quarters of respondents to a survey by the US-based Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence agreed that 'scaling up' LLMs was unlikely to produce artificial general intelligence. Joe Klamar / AFP/File

Hype is growing from leaders of major AI companies that "strong" computer intelligence will imminently outstrip humans, but many researchers in the field see the claims as marketing spin.

The belief that human-or-better intelligence -- often called "artificial general intelligence" (AGI) -- will emerge from current machine-learning techniques fuels hypotheses for the future ranging from machine-delivered hyperabundance to human extinction, AFP said.

"Systems that start to point to AGI are coming into view," OpenAI chief Sam Altman wrote in a blog post last month. Anthropic's Dario Amodei has said the milestone "could come as early as 2026".

Such predictions help justify the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into computing hardware and the energy supplies to run it.

Others, though are more skeptical.

Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun told AFP last month that "we are not going to get to human-level AI by just scaling up LLMs" -- the large language models behind current systems like ChatGPT or Claude.

LeCun's view appears backed by a majority of academics in the field.

Over three-quarters of respondents to a recent survey by the US-based Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) agreed that "scaling up current approaches" was unlikely to produce AGI.

'Genie out of the bottle'

Some academics believe that many of the companies' claims, which bosses have at times flanked with warnings about AGI's dangers for mankind, are a strategy to capture attention.

Businesses have "made these big investments, and they have to pay off," said Kristian Kersting, a leading researcher at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany and AAAI member.

"They just say, 'this is so dangerous that only I can operate it, in fact I myself am afraid but we've already let the genie out of the bottle, so I'm going to sacrifice myself on your behalf -- but then you're dependent on me'."

Skepticism among academic researchers is not total, with prominent figures like Nobel-winning physicist Geoffrey Hinton or 2018 Turing Prize winner Yoshua Bengio warning about dangers from powerful AI.

"It's a bit like Goethe's 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice', you have something you suddenly can't control any more," Kersting said -- referring to a poem in which a would-be sorcerer loses control of a broom he has enchanted to do his chores.

A similar, more recent thought experiment is the "paperclip maximiser".

This imagined AI would pursue its goal of making paperclips so single-mindedly that it would turn Earth and ultimately all matter in the universe into paperclips or paperclip-making machines -- having first got rid of human beings that it judged might hinder its progress by switching it off.

While not "evil" as such, the maximiser would fall fatally short on what thinkers in the field call "alignment" of AI with human objectives and values.

Kersting said he "can understand" such fears -- while suggesting that "human intelligence, its diversity and quality is so outstanding that it will take a long time, if ever" for computers to match it.

He is far more concerned with near-term harms from already-existing AI, such as discrimination in cases where it interacts with humans.

'Biggest thing ever'

The apparently stark gulf in outlook between academics and AI industry leaders may simply reflect people's attitudes as they pick a career path, suggested Sean O hEigeartaigh, director of the AI: Futures and Responsibility program at Britain's Cambridge University.

"If you are very optimistic about how powerful the present techniques are, you're probably more likely to go and work at one of the companies that's putting a lot of resource into trying to make it happen," he said.

Even if Altman and Amodei may be "quite optimistic" about rapid timescales and AGI emerges much later, "we should be thinking about this and taking it seriously, because it would be the biggest thing that would ever happen," O hEigeartaigh added.

"If it were anything else... a chance that aliens would arrive by 2030 or that there'd be another giant pandemic or something, we'd put some time into planning for it".

The challenge can lie in communicating these ideas to politicians and the public.

Talk of super-AI "does instantly create this sort of immune reaction... it sounds like science fiction," O hEigeartaigh said.