UAE reveals AI charter; Intelmatix closes $20m Series A round
Middle East AI News weekly digest...
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Welcome to this week’s Middle East AI News, brought to you by OnDemand, an innovative AI platform which enables you to fast-track AI product development and seamlessly integrate AI and IoT apps into your environment.
Another busy week! The UAE publishes a national AI charter, TII releases some groundbreaking research in reinforced learning for autonomous systems, and Saudi AI company Intelmatix closes a big Series A round. This week also saw the launch of the sixth annual edition of the UAE AI Camp and AI71’s Falcon Hackathon.
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AI Policy
UAE launches AI Charter
#UAE #AIcharter - The UAE's Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications Office has unveiled the Charter for the Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. The charter sets out the UAE’s goals for the ethical, safe and responsible development and usage of AI. Launched during the first week of the UAE AI Camp, the simple guidelines are designed to be of used to the widest possible audience. (Middle East AI News)
Funding
Intelmatix reveals region's biggest AI Series A Round
#Saudi #funding - Intelmatix, a leading deep-tech AI company with operations in Riyadh, London, and Boston, has closed a $20 million Series A funding round led by Shorooq Partners. The investment is the Middle East's largest Series A round for an AI company so far. (Middle East AI News)
Synapse Analytics raises $2 million
#Egypt #Jordan #UAE #funding - Egypt-born AI startup Synapse Analytics, has secured $2 million funding to support expansion in the GCC and Africa, with a focus on transforming the financial sector. Jordanian venture capital firm Silicon Badia and Abu Dhabi's global tech ecosystem Hub71, led fund raising. (TechPoint Africa)
R&D
TII releases groundbreaking RLtools for autonomous systems
#UAE #RT - The Autonomous Robotics Research Center of Abu Dhabi's scientific research centre Technology Innovation Institute (TII), and New York University’s Agile Robotics and Perception Lab, have released a new groundbreaking open-source reinforcement learning library. The new RT Tools library allows developers to train high-speed, end-to-end drone controllers on a standard computer, and speeds up reinforcement learning for autonomous systems by 75 times. (TII)
Hackathon
AI71 and Lablab.ai launch Falcon Hackathon
#UAE #hackathon - The Falcon Hackathon, organised by Abu Dhabi's AI71, and AI development community Lablab.ai began last weekend. Some 5,000 developers were accepted to compete in the hackathon, to create AI apps for such sectors as healthcare, legal, education, and retail. The competition will continue for 10 days, and has a $20,000 prize pool. (Zawya)
GenAI
Qatar Ministry of Education launches chatbot
#Qatar #GenAI - Qatar's Ministry of Education and Higher Education has launched a smart assistant for students and parents via its website. Called Talib, the AI chatbot provides information and support for educational services in Qatar, communicating in both Arabic and English. (Zawya)
Smart Cities
Riyadh employs robots for drain maintenance
#Saudi #robots - Riyadh Municipality has introduced a variety of specialised robots and smart technologies into its regular operations for inspecting stormwater drainage networks and associated systems for proactive maintenance. The additional coverage provided by the robots are expected to improve the safety and readiness of drainage networks in the capital. (SPA)
Mobility
Dubai’s Sustainable City begins robot delivery trial
#UAE #lastmile - The Sustainable City Dubai, has launched a new last mile delivery trial, using autonomous on-demand delivery robots. Organised in collaboration with Dubai Future Labs, and B2B SaaS delivery solutions group Lyve Global, the service promises residents rapid delivery of groceries, restaurant meals and other orders, in under 30 minutes. (Emirates News Agency)
Education
MBZUAI launches six-day executive AI programme
#UAE #training - Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) has opened registrations for executives to apply for a six-day AI programme to be held at its campus in Abu Dhabi in October 2024. (Abu Dhabi Media Office)
UAE AI Camp kicked-off this week
#UAE #education - The UAE's National Program for Artificial Intelligence, in collaboration with the National Program for Coders, launched the sixth annual edition of the UAE Artificial Intelligence Camp this week. The camp will run for five weeks and aims. (Emirates News Agency)
Kuwaiti students take part in Korean AI camp
#Kuwait #SouthKorea #AIcamps - 16 Kuwaiti students from Grades 10 and 11 are taking part in AI camp in South Korean run by the Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KISTI). The visit was organised by the Sabah Al-Ahmad Center for Talent and Creativity, one of the centres of Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS). (Kuwait Times)
Energy
ADNOC’s SARB field goes digital
#UAE #energy - ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) has revealed that its offshore Satah Al Razboot (SARB) field has achieved a 25% increase in production capacity through the implementation of industry-leading advanced digital technologies. A number of AI and autonomous technologies have been implemented to enable remove operations. (ADNOC)
AI Strategy
Pakistan national AI policy in final draft
#Pakistan #AIstrategy - The final draft of the national artificial intelligence policy, will be presented to Pakistan’s Federal Cabinet for approval in August, according to the country's minister of planning. A 15-member National Task Force on AI was formed last year, to develop a 10-year roadmap. (The Express Tribune)
Digital Dubai approves measures for AI data centre strategy
#UAE #datacentres - Digital Dubai has announced new measures to support Dubai's ambitious vision for a sustainable AI-powered data centre sector, which aims to add more than $3.89 billion to the emirate's GDP, by 2028. (Zawya)
Cybersecurity
UAE Cybersecurity Council working on three new policies
#UAE #cybersecurity - UAE Cybersecurity Council has confirmed that it is working on three new policies to be issued by the end of 2024, in the wake of the global Crowdstrike cybersecurity crisis earlier this month. New policies being developed include “cloud computing and data security”, “Internet of Things security”, and “cybersecurity operations centres”. (Emirates News Agency)
Sentiment
68% of Saudi organisations plan to use GenAI
#Saudi #GenAI - Some 68% of organisations in Saudi Arabia plan to use generative AI within the next 12 months to enhance security measures, according to new study carried out by global analyst group Forrester on behalf of network security company Tenable. However, 37 percent of Saudi respondents perceive Gen AI as a greater security threat than an opportunity. (Al Arabiya)
AI Diplomacy
Presight leads AI workshop in Ethiopian capital
#Ethiopia #UAE #training - Abu Dhabi-based big data analytics company Presight, led a workshop on the potential of artificial intelligence for the public sector in Addis Ababa. The three-day workshop was attended by Ethiopia’s Deputy Prime Minister and several high-level Ethiopian Government officials. (Zawya)