Saudi Arabia ranks 1st for government strategy in Global AI Index 2024
Saudi Arabia ranks 1st for government strategy in Global AI Index 2024
Saudi Arabia ranked 14th overall in new AI index, UAE ranked 20th
#GlobalAIIndex2024 - Saudi Arabia has retained its top ranking for Government Strategy in 2024’s Global AI Index compiled by Tortoise Media, meanwhile the Kingdom shot up in the overall index from 31st place to 14th place. The United Arab Emirates moved up eight places from 28th to 20th in the overall ranking, and showed strong progress in the index for research (12th, up from 34th place in 2023) and development (ranking 9th, up from 39th place in 2023). This year’s index has been expanded from 62 countries to 83 countries, with Jordan and Oman entering the index in 63rd and 64th places respectively.
SO WHAT? - The Global AI Index shows clearly that size is not everything and newcomers to the field of artificial intelligence can still compete with countries that have long established technology and R&D hubs. The scale of investment and the critical mass of talent, technology, R&D and market size certainly weigh heavily on a country’s ability to compete for AI leadership. However, Singapore rank in the Index proves that, for the AI sector, size and budget are not everything. Singapore recently announced a US$743 million budget to invest in artificial intelligence over the next five years. Compare that to the C$2.4 billion (US$ 1.77b) budget for AI development announced for Canada’s 2024 budget alone. Nevertheless Singapore ranks third in this year’s index, behind the USA and China, while Canada ranks 8th.
SAUDI ARABIA - Saudi Arabia and the UAE national AI strategies aim to take full advantage of the fact that the rules have changed and it’s possible to outsmart and outmaneuvre the world’s biggest producers of technology when it comes to AI. Saudi Arabia ranked in first place for Government Strategy in last year’s index and retains the top spot in 2024. The Kingdom’s Commercial ecosystem for AI is ranked 7th, beating France, Germany and South Korea.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - The UAE has also faired well in the new Global AI Index, but with improvements in different performance metrics. Abu Dhabi’s well-financed and fast-growing AI R&D hub has certainly helped drive the UAE’s jump in the Research index from 34th place last year, to 12th in 2024. The Emirates also rose sharply in the Development index, which sets out to measure innovation, solution development and new products, ranking 9th this year (compared with 39th in 2023).
THE GAPS - Despite exhaustive research and carefully calculated weightings, indexes can’t tell the full story and some data points in the Global AI Index belie the progress made in areas that strongly affect the indices measured. An index can be both correct and potentially misleading to the reader. Saudi Arabia ranks lowest in the Talent index, in 60th place. A ranking that clearly reflects that Talent remains one of the Kingdom’s biggest challenges. However, the number and scale of Saudi education and training initiatives introduced for data and AI during the past few years is nothing short of mind-blowing. For example, last week during the Global AI Summit, Saudi Arabia launched its latest education initiative, to upskill 1 million citizens in basic AI and data skills. The UAE (which ranked 48th in Talent) is similarly moving mountains to introduce AI at all levels of education, government, business and society. So, Talent is one measure that we can expect to see dramatic improvement in.
NEW ENTRANTS - It is noteworthy to see Jordan and Oman enter 2024’s expanded index in 63rd and 64th place overall. This year’s Global AI Index has grown to list 83 countries, but these two new countries didn’t enter at the bottom of the index. Slower starting than Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Jordan and Oman have both significantly ramped up their efforts to increase AI readiness, adoption, knowledge and R&D over the past 2-3 years (and on much smaller budgets). The strong ranking provides further evidence that size and spend are not always the deciding factors for global competitiveness in AI.
LINKS
Global AI Index 2024 (Tortoise Media)
Global AI Index 2024 rankings page (Tortoise Media)
Global AI Index 2023 (Tortoise Media)