BrazilGenerative AI could add $24 billion to Saudi Arabia’s GDP by 2030
If Saudi Arabia makes major investments into Generative AI – across industries and in a wide variety of use cases – it could add up to $24 billion (SAR 90 billion) to the country’s GDP by 2030, according to market research from Oliver Wyman and the Saudi Data & AI Authority.
Generative AI has the potential to significantly boost productivity and efficiency across sectors, leading to notable increases in national and global GDPs. This impact depends on three key factors: building a strong technology foundation, reskilling the workforce, and driving adoption.
According to Oliver Wyman and the Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA), Generative AI is finding promising applications across various sectors in Saudi Arabia, aligned with the country’s Vision 2030 goals for economic diversification and technological advancement.
In the healthcare sector, Generative AI can accelerate drug discovery, research, and clinical trials, improve patient results in areas such as radiology and pathology through AI-driven diagnostics, and enhance the operations of healthcare institutions. In industrial landscape, AI can boost predictive maintenance, and help streamline manufacturing processes.
In financial services meanwhile, Generative AI can pave the way for a more personalized customer service and financial advice, while in terms of government services, the technology can for instance improve the citizen experience and help bolster safety in public areas. The list of potential use cases across industries is however much longer, noted Oliver Wyman and SDAIA in their report.
Added up, these use cases have the potential to generate new value that equates to around 2% of the total Saudi gross domestic product (GDP).
Upskilling
Due to its economic and social implications, the impact of Generative AI on the workforce is a growing concern anywhere in the world. People in many industries will need to be retrained in order to use AI tools, some companies may downsize headcount in areas where automation can do the job, and others will look to shift their hiring towards AI-savvy professionals.
According to the report, around 60% of white-collar workers are worried about job automation and redundancy. That is because many of the more mechanical or tedious jobs will be replaced with AI tools, like chatbots in customer service, process automation in finance or procurement, for example.
In the Saudi workforce, an average of 150,000 private sector jobs could be impacted by Generative AI advancements by 2030. But that will depend greatly on the extent to which companies end up adopting the technology, added the report.
The study further showed that Saudis already use Generative AI tools more than the global average, and quite dramatically more than US users. A total of 68% of Saudis said that they use Generative AI weekly, compared to 55% globally.
“These adoption figures underscore the technology’s transformative potential to result in significant efficiency improvements. Generative AI could add up to $20 trillion to global GDP by 2030 and save 300 billion hours of work per year,” stated the report.
India, incidentally, has the highest rate of Gen AI use of all countries, showing that the new technology has seen more acceptance outside of Western nations. Europe, for its part, has shown to be apprehensive of using Gen AI tools, being the first region to apply regulations to AI products and services.
