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Digital Cooperation Organization Adopts Riyadh AI Declaration

Digital Cooperation Organization Secretary General, Deemah Al Yahya addresses the summit on Tuesday. (SPA)
Digital Cooperation Organization Secretary General, Deemah Al Yahya addresses the summit on Tuesday. (SPA)
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Digital Cooperation Organization Adopts Riyadh AI Declaration

Digital Cooperation Organization Secretary General, Deemah Al Yahya addresses the summit on Tuesday. (SPA)
Digital Cooperation Organization Secretary General, Deemah Al Yahya addresses the summit on Tuesday. (SPA)

Member states of the Digital Cooperation Organization (DCO) agreed Tuesday to adopt the Riyadh AI Call for Action Declaration (RAICA), which seeks to use AI technology to benefit people, communities, nations, and the world.

The declaration, announced at Saudi Arabia’s Second Global AI Summit, was signed by all members of DCO including Bahrain, Cyprus, Djibouti, Kuwait, Morocco, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Jordan, Rwanda, and Saudi Arabia.

The summit, hosted under the patronage of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, kicked off on Tuesday and concludes on Thursday.

The call to action aims to advance the DCO’s commitment to identify and address present, emerging and future humanitarian issues in the field of AI.

The declaration highlights the different ways AI can be used as a tool to benefit the lives of millions of people around the world by improving the quality of work, developing better-designed public policies and nurturing efficiencies into the ecosystem.

“DCO was created with the ethos of establishing an inclusive digital economy through collaboration across diverse entities at all levels,” said Deemah Al Yahya, secretary general of DCO.

“The RAICA declaration is this idea put into practice. By signing this declaration all DCO member states are reaffirming their shared desire to usher in a brighter future for all by harnessing the huge potential of AI to improve the lives of people around the world,” added Al Yahya.

The declaration highlights seven key pillars that will help to bring this future into reality. Each is composed of principles that seek to address methods to ensure that benefits of AI are enjoyed by all while harming none.

The DCO has developed a series of action areas to help the seven pillars to be implemented.

In other news, Saudi Arabia’s Mozn, a market leader in enterprise AI technologies, participated on Tuesday as a “Technology Partner” at the AI Summit.

Mozn announced that it was building the world’s largest and most effective Arabic NLU models and demonstrated its advanced software technology applications and use cases.

Mozn introduced delegates to OSOS, its leading-edge natural-language understanding (NLU) technology.

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Technology

Apple Shows First Touchscreen Laptops Amid Product Blitz

The Apple Inc logo is seen at the entrance to the Apple store in Brussels, Belgium November 28, 2022. (Reuters)
The Apple Inc logo is seen at the entrance to the Apple store in Brussels, Belgium November 28, 2022. (Reuters)
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Apple Shows First Touchscreen Laptops Amid Product Blitz

The Apple Inc logo is seen at the entrance to the Apple store in Brussels, Belgium November 28, 2022. (Reuters)
The Apple Inc logo is seen at the entrance to the Apple store in Brussels, Belgium November 28, 2022. (Reuters)

Apple CEO John Ternus unveiled the company's first touchscreen MacBooks on Wednesday, abandoning a long-held aversion to the technology as it caps a burst of product launches ahead of the holiday shopping season.

Ternus, a former Apple hardware veteran and the company's new CEO, took the stage at an Apple event in Los Angeles, part of a media blitz filled with new product launches.

He launched a folding iPhone, Duo, at Apple's Silicon Valley headquarters in September and a smart home hub in New York earlier this month. While those ‌products will test ‌new markets for Apple, the Los Angeles event ‌could ⁠rekindle an old question: should ⁠Apple put the touchscreens that it made mainstream in iPhones and iPads in its oldest product line?

Apple executives long resisted the idea, with Steve Jobs saying in 2010 that touchscreens on laptops were "ergonomically terrible" and then-CEO Tim Cook saying in 2012 that such devices would be as pleasing to users as converging a toaster and a refrigerator.

Before becoming Apple's ⁠latest CEO, Ternus argued that Apple already made a touchscreen ‌computer with its iPad lineup.

But touchscreens ‌have been widely available for more than a decade on Windows devices, ‌and with the iPhone nearing its two-decade anniversary, a new generation of ‌buyers expects screens to respond to touch.

"I believe they were always wrong on pushing back on touch, and this is the long arm of reality setting in," said Anshel Sag, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "Some things are purely ‌inevitable."

A key question for Apple is how customers will respond. The company has seen an uptick in ⁠Mac sales, ⁠but much of that growth has been among technology enthusiasts and businesses buying the machines to handle AI tasks on-device.

While Apple this week announced an upgraded base model of its MacBook Pro with a new M6 chip, Bloomberg News has reported that it plans to ship touchscreen models with its existing M5 Pro and M5 Max chips that already come in MacBook Pro models, meaning the new machines would not gain a significant performance boost over existing ones.

"The only thing people want is more memory and better processors for local models!" prominent tech commentator Jason Calacanis, the host of the All-In Podcast, wrote on X.

Technology

Data Center Next Door Divides Old Massachusetts Mill Town

This aerial photo shows the Markley Lowell Data Center surrounded by residential neighborhood homes and apartment buildings in Lowell, Massachusetts, on October 15, 2026. (Photo by Lauren Owens Lambert / AFP)
This aerial photo shows the Markley Lowell Data Center surrounded by residential neighborhood homes and apartment buildings in Lowell, Massachusetts, on October 15, 2026. (Photo by Lauren Owens Lambert / AFP)
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Data Center Next Door Divides Old Massachusetts Mill Town

This aerial photo shows the Markley Lowell Data Center surrounded by residential neighborhood homes and apartment buildings in Lowell, Massachusetts, on October 15, 2026. (Photo by Lauren Owens Lambert / AFP)
This aerial photo shows the Markley Lowell Data Center surrounded by residential neighborhood homes and apartment buildings in Lowell, Massachusetts, on October 15, 2026. (Photo by Lauren Owens Lambert / AFP)

Retiree Eileen Castle hasn't been able to enjoy her backyard since a data center moved in next door in Lowell, Massachusetts, bringing noise, fumes, dust and water mist.

But a few streets away, contractor Louis Haas is grateful to Markley, the company running the facility, for redeveloping an abandoned site he says was rife with drug use.

Dubbed "the Dungeon" by some locals for the imposing black silhouette it casts over a residential neighborhood of this old milling city, those opposing views encapsulate how data centers are polarizing communities across the United States.

Republican-governed states, with their looser regulations, host most of the country's current AI build-out. But in liberal-leaning New England, some feel betrayed by their elected representatives, while others fear being left behind if the industry is curbed.

- 'Nothing but noise' -

Over the din of construction behind a spiked fence, Castle, 82, told AFP her great-great-grandparents bought the property.

But since the data center moved into a disused pasta factory a decade ago, "We have had nothing but noise.

We have dust, dirt. We have all kinds of mist" from the adjoining cooling towers, which she fears could carry Legionnaires' disease.

Noxious fumes made a long interview outdoors impossible, and she lamented that her grandchildren can no longer swim in her small pool.

"I think every once in a while that maybe I should sell my house," she says, but adds her property value has plummeted.

"The Markley Group serves more than 600 clients in Massachusetts and connects the digital infrastructure that powers our economy, our schools, and the everyday needs of our community," Markley Group CEO Jeff Markley said in a statement to AFP.

The company said its backup diesel generators run only for five minute tests each week and, thanks to abatement efforts, produce "about 44 decibels of sound, quieter than a soft conversation three feet away."

It said it tests its water twice a year for Legionnaires', and has planted 2,000 trees.

In 2015, the city council gave Markley a 20-year property and personal property tax break estimated at $77 million, the Lowell Sun newspaper reported at the time.

Enthusiasm has since cooled. In March, the council unanimously passed a 360-day moratorium on construction and expansion of commercial data centers, though Markley's 352,000-square-foot site was grandfathered in.

Residents represented by the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and others have sued to challenge its expansion, which included increasing the number of generators to 27, and won a temporary injunction in August.

CLF attorney Adam Reynolds told AFP that it is the "compounding effect of pollution that's really significant" in a historically industrial area.

- Community divisions -

Markley has supporters. Haas, 50, who supplies coffee to a major tech company, said the boom had been good to contractors like him.

"I'm a big liberal, I'm a Democrat. But I'm also pro-jobs and pro-economy," he told AFP.

Markley said it employs more than 100 full-time staff in Lowell, a third of them local. On top of that, over 100 unionized trades workers work on campus.

Another backer, Sarah Bibeau, a 43-year-old single mother of two who works in the defense sector, told AFP the company had been "kind and considerate," fixing roads and offering favors ranging from yard work to free Red Sox tickets.

Detractors include Jake Fortes, a 44-year-old travel agent who founded the group "Honest Future for Lowell" and whose property sits on the fence line.

"We're getting steamrolled by this company. So some of us have taken it to task," Fortes told AFP.

Like Castle, he feels let down by Democrats, including state Governor Maura Healey -- who signed a sales tax break for data centers into law but then paused new applications this year, a reversal that illustrates the party's dilemma.

Luz Marte, a 38-year-old lab technician, bought her house a year ago, without realizing the site was a data center.

"It sounds very loud, like an airplane is going to take off," she told AFP as her three-year-old son played.

Her home insurer recently moved to triple her premium, which she believes is linked to Markley buying a building even closer to her property.

"This is a home I bought for my son, to grow up, feel alive, and have a future," she said. "Now I'm doubting that idea."

Technology

OpenAI Plans to Buy Google's AI Chips, The Information Reports

FILE PHOTO: OpenAI logo and a keyboard in this illustration created on October 19, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: OpenAI logo and a keyboard in this illustration created on October 19, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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OpenAI Plans to Buy Google's AI Chips, The Information Reports

FILE PHOTO: OpenAI logo and a keyboard in this illustration created on October 19, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: OpenAI logo and a keyboard in this illustration created on October 19, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

OpenAI plans to buy Google's AI chips, The Information reported on Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the matter, as technology companies ramp up spending to meet surging demand for AI computing.

The reported plan would deepen ties between OpenAI and Alphabet's Google, which compete in AI products and search but have increasingly struck commercial deals. Last week, OpenAI said it would make its frontier AI models available through Google Cloud.

The report did not disclose financial terms or other details. Google did not ⁠immediately respond to ⁠a Reuters request for comment outside regular business hours, while OpenAI declined to comment.

Amazon, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet plan to spend as much as $600 billion combined this year on AI infrastructure as investors increasingly question when such spending will translate into meaningful returns.

OpenAI is already among the ⁠largest buyers of Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs), which it uses to train and deploy AI models. Reuters reported in June 2025 that the ChatGPT maker had begun renting Google's AI chips.

Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) have gained traction as an alternative to Nvidia's market-leading AI chips as companies seek cheaper options. Google began selling TPUs directly to some customers this year.

Alphabet will report its quarterly results later on Wednesday, with investors looking for signs that its heavy investment in ⁠AI is ⁠continuing to drive growth in its cloud business.

Deals with customers including rival Anthropic have fueled demand for Google's TPUs. Alphabet expects to begin recognizing a small percentage of revenue from TPU sales agreements by the end of this year, with the vast majority expected to be recognized in 2027, CFO Anat Ashkenazi previously said.

OpenAI in June unveiled its first custom AI chip designed with Broadcom, and said it planned to deploy the processor by the end of this year as part of a multi-generation chip program.