SDAIA partners with IBM for Gen AI centre of excellence in KSA and Arabic LLM

11 September 2024 Consultancy-me.com

The Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) is partnering with IBM to enhance the development of Generative AI technology in Saudi Arabia.

Unveiled at the Global AI Summit in Riyadh, the Saudi Data and AI Authority has inked a memorandum of understanding with IBM that includes a number of initiatives aimed at advancing the use of Generative AI in the kingdom.

Generative AI is a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that has gained massive attention since the launch of ChatGPT, one of the many Generative AI tools on the market. Generative AI is best known for its use cases in the area of language and text (driven by Large Language Models), but the technology also has all kinds of other applications in areas such as images, audio, computer code, process automation and more.

Demonstrating the potential, a recent report from Oliver Wyman claimed that Generative AI could add up to SAR 90 billion to Saudi Arabia’s GDP by 2030. That is for Saudi Arabia alone, with another report from fellow management consultancy McKinsey & Company forecasting that Generative AI could end up generating up to $4.4 trillion in economic value added worldwide.

Working together with IBM, SDAIA aims to establish a specialised Centre of Excellence for developing Generative AI technologies. The centre will lead the exploration of use cases, best practices, and provide guidelines and recommendations on how government entities and private sector companies can adopt Generative AI according to global standards and governance frameworks.

The collaboration also includes the launch of the ALLaM challenge. This challenge seeks to enhance existing LLMs with Arabic knowledge and position the ALLaM model as the leading Arabic LLM model on global platforms. The ALLaM model will be hosted on the IBM Watsonx platform (IBM’s supercomputer).

The memorandum of understanding between the two companies was signed by the General Manager of IBM in Saudi Arabia, Fahad Alanazi, and the CEO of the National Center for AI, Yaser bin Mohammed Al-Onaizan.

In a statement, SDAIA said that the partnership is expected to contribute to the exchange of expertise and enhancement of national capabilities that support Saudi Vision 2030 goals, which are focused towards building a knowledge-based society and reinforcing Saudi’s position as a global hub for technology.

In related news, SDAIA is also working with Oliver Wyman on developing a framework for Generative AI capabilities. This framework will following its release be used by governments and enterprises as a guide for measuring their readiness towards Generative AI adoption, and for beefing up their Generative AI maturity.

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