Majority of Saudi companies gearing up for future with AI technology: Business report

Arab News
June 19, 2019

Riyadh, Jun 19: Companies in Saudi Arabia are gearing up to take advantage of the latest advances in artificial intelligence (AI), according to an in-depth regional business report.

Although firms in the Kingdom remain wary of committing major investment to the emerging technology, many are already implementing data improvement initiatives to prepare for an AI-enabled future.

New research revealed on Tuesday that 89 percent of Saudi businesses indicated AI to be an important consideration of executive management, with predictive technology seen as the most relevant application by 79 percent of companies who took part in the survey.

And experts believe the Kingdom is well-positioned to “leapfrog” other countries in the race toward achieving the goals of the Saudi Vision 2030 reform plan.

According to the AI maturity report covering the Middle East and Africa, commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by Ernst & Young (EY), the Saudi business community is keeping up to speed on developments.

Releasing the report to the media, Thamer Al-Harbi, president of Microsoft Arabia, said: “Saudi Arabian businesses are taking a keen interest in AI from a strategic viewpoint. This bodes well for the future of the technology within the Kingdom as AI maturity begins with executives identifying business problems that need to be solved.

“Saudi companies are gearing up to take their AI agenda to the next level and moving forward by leveraging AI technology in alignment with the National Transformation Program 2020 toward achieving Vision 2030.

“Although they are still near the beginning of the maturity curve, they are well-positioned to leverage global experience in AI, which could ultimately enable them to leapfrog other countries in the next few years,” added Al-Harbi.

Despite AI activity having been relatively quiet in Saudi Arabia over the past 10 years, with a total investment of around $585 million, the Kingdom emerged strongly again in 2018, said the report.

Across industries, there was a significant buzz around the topic of AI, with 42 percent of companies reporting that conversations on the subject were already taking place at non-managerial levels, the highest percentage recorded by any country in the Middle East and Africa, Al-Harbi said.

AI development, though in its earliest stages, is underway. At least 26 percent of businesses reported that they were planning AI activity, while at the same time actively investing in relevant skills.

Pockets of excellence were also shown to be emerging, with 16 percent of companies saying AI was already contributing significantly to their business processes.

While Saudi executives intuitively sense the value of AI, they are conscious that getting too caught up in the hype might blind them to the dangers of investing in technology that is only just starting to demonstrate its commercial value.

As it stands, the main concern for businesses in implementing AI is the diffusion of their resources.

The report found that at least 32 percent of firms in the Kingdom were cautious of spreading their budgetary and human resources too thin, and that the primary focus for most was digitization. Although 37 percent of respondents viewed AI as an important priority, it was not at the top of their list.

Instead, they were actively building the infrastructure needed for digital transformation, starting with good-quality data.

Steve Plimsoll, MENA data and intelligence advisory leader for EY, said: “The biggest problem to date with AI is that it is not always right. AI has given us the ability to make data-driven predictions, decisions and actions faster than ever before, but it is only as effective as the data and algorithms it relies on.

“So, while it’s great to see local companies investing in adoption of AI, the focus must be on building trust that the underlying data and algorithms are reliable, the models ethical and the predictions are measurable and as accurate as they can be. Without trust, AI will never fully move from fiction into reality.”

The report also revealed that in general, Saudi businesses were upbeat about the future impact of AI on their businesses and 37 percent expected it to impact their core business to a very high degree.

Those quizzed were particularly positive about the potential of AI to assist employees in executing their daily functions more effectively.

Currently, prediction was seen as the most relevant application of AI for 79 percent of Saudi companies, with organizations using AI to predict risk and fraud or combining it with intelligent automation to assign workloads to individuals, ultimately optimizing business processes, the report said.

The study added that 68 percent of respondents indicated that automation was one of the most relevant applications of AI in their pursuit of operational efficiency.

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News Network
March 25,2024

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A Palestinian woman has recounted terrifying incidents after Israeli military forces raided al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City last week, saying the occupying regime’s soldiers are raping Palestinian women before killing them.

Jamila Al-Hisi, an eyewitness who was besieged in the medical complex and managed to finally get out, said on Saturday that women have been subjected to rape, starvation, torture, and extrajudicial execution, adding that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is doing nothing.

She went on to say that Israeli troops have “forced 65 families to leave the area around the al-Shifa Medical Complex whilst burning and killing entire families,” noting that they have burned a building where Palestinian civilians were taking shelter.

“We don’t even have water to break our fast, and we don’t know where to go,” Hisi said, stressing that the displaced people in the compound have not found food or water for six days.

She further called on the Red Cross to provide water for the children and the sick who are being forced to drink dirty water and eat rotten food.

Palestinians are being forcibly displaced by Israeli occupation forces from the area surrounding al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, Hisi said, adding, “We are trapped amid continued Israeli shelling.”

The latest development comes as the Israeli military continues to carry out air strikes and artillery shelling in and around the al-Shifa Hospital for the seventh day in a row.

On Monday, heavily armed Israeli forces stormed the al-Shifa hospital using tanks and drones, claiming that the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas is using the facility to “conduct and promote terrorist activity.” Later that day, Israel said that “terrorist forces” were firing at Israeli troops.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said at the time that about 3,000 people were inside al-Shifa seeking refuge and that those attempting to leave were being targeted by snipers and fire from helicopters.

Ever since the Israeli military raided the hospital last week, reports have suggested unspeakable atrocities being carried out against the doctors, nurses, and general staff as well as the thousands of displaced people there.

Israelis have admitted to executing 140 people inside al-Shifa, including paramedics, patients and wounded whilst the siege is still ongoing after seven days with mass arrests.

Meanwhile, a group of Palestinian activists have circulated a shocking story about the Israeli soldiers raping a pregnant woman in the al-Shifa hospital, alongside Hisi’s revelation.

Watan-Palestinian activists quoted the husband of a woman who was raped by Israeli forces as saying that “They ordered her to undress and began to beat her… She told the military she was five months pregnant, not to beat her, but they continued to beat her.”

“After hours, they took out all the women except the pregnant woman, and her children… They took her in front of her husband and children and raped her, ordering the men not to close their eyes or they would be shot.”

Israel waged the war on the Gaza Strip on October 7 after Hamas carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm into the occupied territories in response to the occupying regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people.

Since the start of the aggression, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 32,226 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured another 74,518 individuals.

Tel Aviv has also imposed a “complete siege” on Gaza, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.

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News Network
March 21,2024

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Israeli military siege, hunger, and diseases will soon become the main killer in Gaza, says commissioner- general of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the UNRWA for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, took to X on Wednesday to vent his concern for the growing hunger and spread of diseases as a result of the Israeli siege on the besieged strip.

He said starvation and illness may soon be the main killer in Gaza.

"This fabricated and catastrophic level of hunger can still be reversed by flooding Gaza with food and life-saving assistance," Lazzarini said.

"More than ever humanity requires political will,” the UNRWA chief added.

In a press release on March 19, UNRWA said that “famine is imminent in the Gaza Strip, especially for isolated populations in northern Gaza deprived of humanitarian aid.”

The statement noted that the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), in a latest food security outlook, concluded that up to 1.1 million people in Gaza are facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.

“Nutrition screenings conducted in February by UNICEF and UNRWA show that rates of acute malnutrition among children in northern Gaza and Rafah have nearly doubled since January,” it said.

The Israeli regime has accused UNRWA staff of being involved in the October 7 attack by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas against the occupied territories, prompting a number of its western allies to suspend funding for the UN agency.

On Wednesday, an agreement was reached by US congressional leaders and the White House on a massive funding bill will continue a ban on US funding for UNRWA until March 2025, Reuters reported.

Earlier this year the US, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Estonia, Japan, Austria and Romania  decided to cut their funding to the UNRWA, considered a lifeline for the Palestinians in Gaza.

France had also announced that it does not plan a new payment to fund UNRWA in the first quarter of 2024.

Condemning the suspension of funding, Lazzarini had said, “It would be immensely irresponsible to sanction an agency and an entire community…, especially at a time of war, displacement and political crises in the region.”

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News Network
March 25,2024

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The Israeli military has attacked desperate Palestinians lining up for humanitarian aid in Gaza City, killing at least 19 people and injuring 23 others in a new massacre against aid seekers. 

The Government Media Office in Gaza said in a statement that the carnage took place on Saturday near the al-Kuwait roundabout, southeast of Gaza City.

“The occupation army and tanks opened fire with machine guns at the hungry people who were waiting for bags of flour and aid in a remote place that did not pose a threat to the occupation,” the statement said.

Mahmud Basal, spokesman for the Civil Defense Department in Gaza, said there had been “heavy shooting at civilians” looking for food to help their families and children.

“There were very serious injuries, some of whom were injured by shrapnel. The reality is tragic, difficult, and challenging,” he added, saying the victims were taken to the nearby al-Ahli Arab hospital.

Speaking to Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV network, Alaa al-Khudary, a witness at the scene, said that Israeli forces shot at the crowd, leaving “many dead” and injuring others while they tried to get “a bite to eat” for their children.

However, the Israeli army claimed that the reports of its troops firing on a Gaza aid queue are “incorrect.”

In recent weeks, Israeli soldiers have conducted several deadly attacks on crowds of aid seekers in the besieged Gaza.

In mid-March the Israeli military opened fire on Palestinian civilians who had gathered in Gaza to obtain humanitarian aid, targeting them with gunfire from helicopters, tanks, and drones near the Kuwait roundabout on the outskirts of Gaza City, killing over 60 people and injuring 160 others.

In what is known as the “flour massacre”, the occupation forces killed 118 people and wounded 760 others as they opened fire on hundreds of Palestinians waiting for aid trucks in Gaza City’s al-Rashid Street on February 29.

Earlier this month, the Government Media Office in Gaza said that a total of 400 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on aid seekers since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal aggression against the Palestinian territory.

Israel waged its US-backed war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

So far, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 32,142 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 74,412 others.

Israel is intentionally starving the people in Gaza by blocking their access to food, a war crime under the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute.

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