Tech giants and global organizations unite at GAIN Summit 2024 to advance AI as Day One concludes

Today saw the start of the highly anticipated GAIN Summit, hosted by the Saudi Data & Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) in Riyadh across three days to explore the latest advancements in artificial intelligence. 

Focused on pushing the boundaries of AI for the good of humanity, the first day of the summit addressed challenges such as biases in AI models, and emphasized the need for global collaboration and the establishment of robust AI governance frameworks. 

Several technology giants and leading international organisations made major announcements during the day, including:

Nvidia announced a groundbreaking collaboration with SDAIA that will leverage the latest technological advancements to enable developers to more easily build and deploy AI applications with the ALLaM Arabic LLM model. The collaboration will set a new standard for AI-driven language models in the Middle East. The two organisations are further planning to expand on SDAIA’s existing supercomputer infrastructure, establishing one of the largest high-performance computing data centers in the MENA region, using NVIDIA Blackwell architecture.

OECD signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with SDAIA to strengthen AI incident monitoring in Middle Eastern countries and track data in the Arabic language. It will leverage the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s extensive resources and database of over 1,000 AI policies from 70 countries, as well as collaboration with local entities, and will help countries collectively address the opportunities and challenges posed by AI.

UNESCO and SDAIA announced today that the International Center for Research and Ethics in Artificial Intelligence (ICAIRE) has been classified as a Category 2 (C2) center under UNESCO's auspices. The classification underscores the pivotal role of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in advancing international and regional cooperation in AI policies, ethics, and research.

The third edition of the GAIN Summit is featuring over 450 speakers – industry leaders, policymakers and researchers – from more than 100 countries. 

Highlights sessions from Day 1 across four stages included ‘Generative AI and personalised adventure’ with Boson AI CEO Alex Smola and ‘Beyond Words: Unleashing the Power of Generative AI with Next Generation Arabic LLMs’ with H.E. Dr. Esam Alwagait, Director of the National Information Centre; Jonathan Adashek, Senior Vice President of Marketing & Communications, IBM; and Marketing & Communications, IBM; and Turki Badhris, President, Microsoft Arabia.

The summit continues tomorrow with sessions on job disruption and the future of work, realizing the potential of AI for healthcare and integrating health in sports.