The third edition of the Global AI Summit (GAIN Summit), organized by the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA), kicked off in Riyadh on Tuesday under the patronage of Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince, Prime Minister, and Chairman of the SDAIA's Board of Directors.
The event, which runs through September 12, features 450 speakers and attendees from 100 countries, including prominent figures in the field of AI, policymakers, and thought leaders.
At the summit, 150 sessions and workshops will be held.
The opening ceremony was attended by several prominent figures, including members of the Royal Family, ministers, foreign officials, thought leaders, and executives from leading technology and AI companies from around the globe, alongside ambassadors accredited to the Kingdom.
In his opening speech, SDAIA President Dr. Abdullah bin Sharaf Al-Ghamdi expressed gratitude to Crown Prince Mohammed for his patronage and emphasized the summit's role in furthering the Kingdom's Vision 2030.
Al-Ghamdi highlighted the Kingdom's leadership in AI innovation and SDAIA's commitment to its role to propel the nation's economic growth through data and AI.
He underlined the summit's aim to push the AI boundaries for the benefit of humanity while acknowledging the ethical challenges posed by the rise of generative AI, including forgery, and the need to address information generated using AI.
He highlighted the global competition for AI talent and the need to overcome the challenges inherent in attracting talent, particularly from the global North, in order to ensure balanced digital, economic, and social development.
Al-Ghamdi presented the authority's achievements in the field of data and AI since its establishment in 2019, including holding the first edition of the Global AI Summit, where discussions led to the establishment of a UN-affiliated advisory body for AI.
He underlined the authority's role in fostering global collaboration in AI governance through hosting a major consultation for the UN, in which over 50 countries participated.
Moreover, he lauded UNESCO's efforts in promoting AI ethics, including the establishment of the International Center for Artificial Intelligence Research and Ethics (ICAIRE), in Riyadh, which is recognized by the organization as an international center.
He further outlined key SDAIA initiatives, including the ALLaM model, a pioneering Arabic language model developed in Saudi Arabia, and the "SauTech" innovation, a highly accurate Arabic speech-to-text tool covering 15 Arabic dialects. The technology is being utilized by the Ministry of Justice to transcribe court sessions, placing it at the forefront of AI-driven judicial system.
Al-Ghamdi emphasized SDAIA's ongoing work with government agencies to leverage AI in the healthcare sector, highlighting the "EYENAI" solution, which has contributed to the early diagnosis of 846 potential patients in the past year.
He stressed SDAIA's commitment to addressing the challenges facing local and global AI talents. To attain this goal, he said, the authority organized the largest national programming and AI Olympiad, in which more than 570,000 Saudi students participated, asserting that the Kingdom is hosting the first International AI Olympiad, with 25 countries competing in Riyadh.
He stressed that SDAIA continues to build national capabilities and aims to achieve gender equality in the AI workforce.
SDAIA, he said, has also made strides on a global scale with its effort to promote gender equality worldwide, particularly through the Elevate Initiative, which was launched during the second edition of the Global AI Summit, and through which the skills of women from 28 countries have been honed.
Al-Ghamdi stressed that AI is not a tool that replaces human capabilities, but a powerful enabler in expanding them, and "this journey is not just about technical achievements, but a race for a more brilliant industrial intelligence. It is about forging a partnership between humans and machines to solve pressing challenges so that AI can work for humanity".
He called for a human-centered AI, where technology promotes creativity and human compassion instead of replacing them, urging participants to join the summit discussions to bridge gaps, improve the quality of life, and create a future in which technology and humanity are in harmony.
Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Al-Swaha presented the investment theory in AI in the first session of summit, titled "Empowering Society through AI Driven Technology". He noted that the Kingdom's challenge lies in starting from a high level of ambition to achieve productivity and prosperity through local, regional, and global innovations.
He said: "We can take cloud computing as an example, as innovation began in 2006 and continued until 2013. The sector faced many challenges at the physical and technical levels as well. Still, it succeeded in moving from an industry worth $10 billion to a broad market worth more than half a trillion dollars".
He touched on three main challenges in AI: devices and energy efficiency, where, he said, AI techniques lack energy efficiency; storage and memory, with many global developers exerting efforts to accelerate the development of memory devices; and models, where there might be confusion regarding accurate and false information, or some biases may occur.
The opening ceremony included visual presentations of the scope of AI, its relationship with humans, and the development of related technologies.
At the summit, SDAIA, in partnership with UNESCO, announced that the International Center for Artificial Intelligence Research and Ethics (ICAIRE) classifies as a Category 2 Center (C2C) under UNESCO auspices.
ICAIRE's classification underscores the significant role Saudi Arabia plays in fostering international and regional partnerships in AI policies, ethics, and research, in addition to its global initiatives supporting the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The classification is an acknowledgement of the Kingdom's dedication to advancing UNESCO's mission to utilize AI for the betterment of humanity, with emphasis on assisting developing nations, and the attainment of the UN SDGs.
