Several technology giants and leading international organisations made major announcements on the opening day of the three-day GAIN Summit which is exploring the latest advancements in artificial intelligence.

 

The Summit, which opened on September 10, in Riyadh is being hosted by the Saudi Data & Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) and 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 emphasised the need for global collaboration and the establishment of robust AI governance frameworks. 

 

Among the announcements, Nvidia disclosed 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. 

 

Expanding SDAIA's infrastructure

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

 

Over 450 speakers

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 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.--TradeArabia News Service