From Aidoghie Paulinus, Abuja
The Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) has launched a pioneering initiative to advance ethical research and applications in artificial intelligence aimed at setting a new standard in the global AI landscape, underscoring 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 SunThe Royal Saudi Embassy in Abuja said the initiative, created in collaboration with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), is aimed at a wide range of stakeholders, including policymakers, government officials, researchers, academics, business leaders, corporate executives and AI developers and engineers.
“Its goal is to create a platform to discuss the future of AI and explore how modern applications can strengthen policymaking, improve research environments, foster business growth and influence various aspects of life.
“The program promotes the sharing of knowledge and best practices to integrate ethical standards into the development of artificial intelligence. It also aims to provide a global framework to assess the ethical maturity of AI systems, facilitate collaboration to advance ethical research and applications, and promote responsible AI globally through impactful deliberations and harmonization of strategies.
“The newly launched program is part of a collaborative effort to advance AI systems, develop ethical standards that guide the use of AI applications, and ensure that these technologies align with religious, human, and moral values while preserving 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 common goals in developing data and AI strategies that support societal growth and sustainability,” the Saudi government said.
The Saudi government also stated that as the body responsible for developing data and artificial intelligence technologies in the Kingdom, SDAIA encourages relevant authorities to implement the best ethical practices in line with the values and ethics of Saudi society.
“It also supports the promotion of research and policy development that fosters investment in the field, while advancing data-driven economies and artificial intelligence globally,” Saudi authorities also said.
Similarly, SDAIA has collaborated with NVIDIA Corporation to propel Saudi Arabia to the forefront of AI innovation and integration of NVIDIA’s latest technological advancements to make it easier for developers to build and deploy AI applications with the ALLaM Arabic LLM model, ensuring unmatched performance and scalability for region-specific workloads.
“By leveraging NVIDIA NeMo, part of the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform for training language models at scale, and NeMo Guardrails for AI safety, this strategic initiative will provide developers with a faster and 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 central part of 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 centers 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 reach over 5,000 GPUs, setting a new benchmark for digital innovation and infrastructure in Saudi Arabia,” the Saudi government added.
