SAMAI AI training reaches 424,000 Saudi citizens
SDAIA initiative accelerates towards million-person target
#SaudiArabia #education - Saudi Arabia's national artificial intelligence training programme SAMAI has reached 424,000 participants, representing a surge of 94,000 new learners in just over three weeks. Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority's "One Million Saudis in AI" initiative, known as SAMAI, has now trained more than 42% of its ambitious one million citizen target. The public programme has been developed in partnership with government education ministry the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development.
SO WHAT? - Recruitment for the SAMAI public training programme is still going strong and is on track to enroll 1 million Saudi nationals. SDAIA has ramped up its recruitment for the programme over the past few months and earlier this month announced that it had trained over 330,000 citizens. SAMAI is part of Saudi Arabia's systematic approach to building national AI competencies at unprecedented scale, positioning the Kingdom as a global leader in population-wide AI education.
Here are a few key facts about SAMAI:
Saudi Arabia's SAMAI public education initiative has trained 424,000 citizens in artificial intelligence skills, representing a significant increase of 94,000 participants from 330,000 recorded just over three weeks ago.
The programme has now achieved 42% of its target to train one million Saudi citizens, demonstrating accelerating momentum since its launch at the Global AI Summit in September 2024.
SAMAI operates through a partnership between the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development.
The initiative forms part of Saudi Arabia's broader AI education ecosystem, which includes the National Olympiad for Programming and Artificial Intelligence that engaged 260,000 students from 10,000 schools nationwide.
SAMAI supports Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 objectives by building critical AI capabilities across the population to meet evolving labour market demands and strengthen national competitiveness.
ZOOM OUT - The SAMAI initiative operates under Saudi Arabia's National Strategy for Data and AI (NSDAI), launched in 2020, which targets creating 20,000 AI and data specialists by 2030. The strategy's skills pillar of the strategy emphasises transforming the Saudi workforce through talent development and incorporating AI education to align with labour market requirements. Strategy goals include positioning Saudi Arabia among the top 15 countries globally in AI.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]
LINKS
SAMAI registration (SAMAI website)
Read more about SDAIA education initiatives:
SDAIA's SAMAI initiative trains 330,000 Saudis in AI (Middle East AI News)
Saudi Arabia urges citizens to register for SAMAI training (Middle East AI News)
SDAIA trains 779,000 in data & AI skills (Middle East AI News)
Saudi launches AI-powered National Skills Platform (Middle East AI News)
Tuwaiq Academy & Berkeley aim to equip CEOs for AI (Middle East AI News)