Saudi MCIT and TONOMUS Announce I.D.E.A. Initiative

The Saudi Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and TONOMUS announced The Immersive Digital Environments and Assets (I.D.E.A.) Initiative. (SPA)
The Saudi Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and TONOMUS announced The Immersive Digital Environments and Assets (I.D.E.A.) Initiative. (SPA)
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Saudi MCIT and TONOMUS Announce I.D.E.A. Initiative

The Saudi Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and TONOMUS announced The Immersive Digital Environments and Assets (I.D.E.A.) Initiative. (SPA)
The Saudi Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and TONOMUS announced The Immersive Digital Environments and Assets (I.D.E.A.) Initiative. (SPA)

The Saudi Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and TONOMUS, the NEOM-born cognitive technology company, announced The Immersive Digital Environments and Assets (I.D.E.A.) Initiative.
The initiative, originally showcased during a keynote presentation at LEAP 2024, is envisioned to propel the Saudi immersive technology sector among the leading nations and fuel the Kingdom’s digital economy ambitions as part of economic diversification, realizing Saudi Arabia’s vision 2030, the Saudi Press Agency said.
Through the initiative, MCIT, TONOMUS, and partners will work closely to activate a national partner network to engage policymakers, researchers, technology providers, and end users in the participatory design of ecosystem interventions.
The initiative will create a unified strategic plan and activation roadmap across public- and private-sector partners to jumpstart immersive tech economy development as well as to develop a comprehensive solution blueprint for national immersive tech developments and establish standards to unite a diverse array of technology stakeholders.
MCIT and TONOMUS have already onboarded more than 15 potential partners across Saudi Arabia’s tech landscape and have issued a call to interested organizations to engage.
I.D.E.A. spans immersive experiences, virtual collaboration spaces, industrial digital twin and metaverse applications enabled by the convergence of several emerging technologies, including mixed reality, artificial intelligence (AI), three-dimensional (3D) modeling, and spatial computing, among others.
“The launch of this initiative is a testament to The Kingdom’s ambition to harness technology in building a thriving digital society and economy,” said MCIT Undersecretary for Technology Mohammed Alrobayan.
“For MCIT, this initiative is directly aligned with our objectives of growing the technology sector and supporting localized technology development. The involvement of TONOMUS and our plan for this partner network reinforces MCIT’s support for collaboration across the public and private sectors. We want to be at the forefront of immersive technology and accelerate a new wave of digital transformation”, he added.
“At the core,” said TONOMUS chief commercial officer Yousef Khalili,” this initiative is an effort to develop a local immersive tech ecosystem by driving technology adoption and supporting next-generation tech solutions. This partnership has been more than a year in the making and is based on a shared vision at the intersection of MCIT’s goal to unlock more value for the Kingdom through technology, and TONOMUS’ ambition to be a home-grown cognitive technology champion. TONOMUS is committed to developing innovative, next-generation technology solutions to propel Saudi organizations into the future”.



Microsoft Looks to Boost AI Performance in European Languages

FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo
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Microsoft Looks to Boost AI Performance in European Languages

FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo

US tech behemoth Microsoft is investing millions of dollars to funnel more European-language data into AI development, company president Brad Smith told AFP Monday.

With today's leading AI models mostly trained on material in English, "the survival of these languages and the health of these cultures is quite literally at stake" without a course correction, Smith said in an interview.

AI models are "less capable when it is in a language that has insufficient data," he added -- which could push more users to switch to English even when it is not their native language.

Microsoft will from September set up research units in the eastern French city Strasbourg to "help expand the availability of multilingual data for AI development" in at least 10 of the European Union's 24 languages, including Estonian and Greek.

The work will include digitizing books and recording hundreds of hours of audio.

"This isn't about creating data for Microsoft to own. It is about creating data for the public to be able to use," Smith said, adding that the information would be shared on an open-source basis.

The US-based company has in recent months striven to position itself as especially compatible with a gathering political push for European technological sovereignty.

Leaders in the bloc have grown increasingly nervous at their dependency on US tech firms and infrastructure since Donald Trump's reelection to the White House.

In June, Microsoft said it was stepping up cooperation with European governments on cybersecurity and announced new "data sovereignty" measures for its data centers on the continent.

Smith said that Monday's announcement was just the latest evidence of the company's commitment to Europe.

Most leading AI firms are American or Chinese, although Europe has some standouts like France's Mistral or Franco-American platform Hugging Face.

Away from Microsoft, some European initiatives such as TildeLM are pushing to develop local-language AI models.

The Windows and Office developer also said Monday that it was working on a digital recreation of Paris' Notre-Dame cathedral that it plans to gift to the French state, as well as digitizing items from the country's BNF national library and Decorative Arts Museum.