From Aidoghie Paulinus, Abuja
The Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) has launched a pioneering initiative to advance ethical artificial intelligence research and applications aimed at setting a new standard in the global AI landscape, emphasising the Kingdom’s commitment to responsible innovation.
The development was announced on the sidelines of the third edition of the Global AI Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
In a statement made available to the Daily Sun, the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Abuja said that the initiative, which was created in collaboration with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), was aimed at a wide range of stakeholders, including decision-makers, government officials, researchers, academics, corporate leaders, business managers, and AI developers and engineers.
“It aims to create a platform for discussing the future of AI and exploring how modern applications can empower policy development, enhance research environments, foster business growth, and influence various aspects of life.
“The programme promotes the sharing of knowledge and best practices for integrating ethical standards into the development of artificial intelligence. It also aims to provide a comprehensive framework for assessing the ethical maturity of AI systems, facilitate collaboration to advance research and ethical applications and promote responsible AI on a global scale through impactful deliberations and harmonisation of strategies.
“The newly launched programme is part of a collaborative effort to advance AI systems, develop ethical standards that guide the use of AI applications, and ensure these technologies align with religious, human, and moral values while safeguarding family and societal well-being. It also reflects SDAIA’s commitment to working with international institutions to promote the ethical use of AI and achieve shared goals in developing data and AI strategies that support societal growth and sustainability,” the Saudi Arabian Government said.
The Saudi Government further said that as the responsible body for the development of data and artificial intelligence technologies in the Kingdom, SDAIA encouraged relevant authorities to implement ethical best practices in alignment with Saudi societal values and ethics.
“It also supports the promotion of research and policymaking that foster investment in the field, while advancing data-driven economies and artificial intelligence on a global scale,” the Saudi authorities also said.
In like manner, the SDAIA has collaborated with NVIDIA Corporation to propel Saudi Arabia to the forefront of AI innovation and integration of the latest NVIDIA technological advancements to enable developers to more easily build and deploy AI applications with the ALLaM Arabic LLM model, ensuring an unparalleled performance and scalability for region-specific workloads.
“Leveraging NVIDIA NeMo, part of the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform for large-scale language model training and NeMo Guardrails for AI safety, this strategic move will provide developers with a faster, more accessible path to building generative AI applications with ALLaM’s capabilities and set a new standard for AI-driven language models in the region, making it a pivotal element in Arabic language AI.
“In addition to these advancements in AI applications, SDAIA is working closely with NVIDIA to significantly scale its supercomputing infrastructure. Plans are in place to establish one of the largest high-performance computing data centres in the MENA region by expanding SDAIA’s existing NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD infrastructure. This expansion is planned to integrate NVIDIA’s most advanced technologies, including the upcoming NVIDIA Blackwell architecture, and is expected to eventually grow to over 5,000 GPUs, setting a new benchmark for digital innovation and infrastructure in Saudi Arabia,” the Saudi Arabian Government further said.