Oil revenues are invested heavily to ensure a post-crude future
Gulf countries are betting on artificial intelligence for a new stage ahead
The robots of "Expo 2020 Dubai" are an indication of the country's ambitions to lead in the field of artificial intelligence.
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Artificial intelligence is the focus of the Gulf countries’ planning for the next stage.
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The robots roaming the site of the World Expo in Dubai may be evidence of a major development coming to the affluent Gulf region, where new cities are being built from scratch with the main focus of artificial intelligence.
The Expo city extends over an area twice the size of the Principality of Monaco, as part of a huge project that cost about seven billion dollars and relies on the latest technologies, including the fifth generation network.
The Minister of State for International Cooperation and Director-General of the Expo 2020 Dubai office, Reem Al-Hashemi, confirmed to Agence France-Presse before the opening of the World Expo last month that the site will turn into a permanent "new city" and a center for the technology industry.
And this smart city with robots that welcomes visitors and can be used to order food is not the only one in the Gulf region, where oil revenues are invested heavily to ensure a post-crude future.
Saudi Arabia is seeking to obtain investments worth $500 billion in NEOM, the modern city it is building in the Red Sea to provide smart living for its one million residents, which may include flying taxis in the future.
Artificial intelligence is the focus of other Saudi projects, including the Red Sea project, the new tourist district that will use smart systems to monitor environmental impacts and visitor movements.
Experts believe that the Gulf countries are ready to bet heavily on artificial intelligence, as they move away from the fossil fuel industries in the future and engage in the technology, tourism, services, and other sectors.
"Governments (in the Gulf) have the ability to be more strategic," Kaveh Visalli of PwC Middle East professional services told AFP, referring to development plans over a period of 20 to 50 years, which is one of the characteristics of the governments of the Gulf region. .
He adds that this strategy "is not usual in the private sector or in the West."
He believes that today's leaders in the Gulf "enjoy a future vision, love risk and realize the need for transformation."
He points out that most of the AI companies in the Gulf countries are fully governmental, or at least semi-governmental, and therefore they are not under great pressure to generate short-term revenues.
self-driving
Artificial intelligence has become part of the education curriculum in Bahrain’s primary schools, the UAE plans to use drones for automated delivery, and Dubai aspires to have 25% of all its transportation become self-driving by 2030, all of which are additional indicators of the Gulf’s technological aspirations.
The Middle East's share of the global artificial intelligence economy, estimated at $15.7 billion by 2030, is expected to be only about 2%, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
But analysts say that the Gulf states are making long-term plans to bypass the major global players in this field in the future.
Finally, PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a report that the annual growth rate of the artificial intelligence market in the Middle East ranges between 20 and 34%, led by the UAE and then Saudi Arabia, expecting that artificial intelligence will contribute more than 10% of the gross domestic product of both countries by 2030.
liberal and bold
The artificial intelligence strategies of the Gulf region are characterized as being more “liberal and bold,” according to experts.
In 2017, the UAE appointed its first Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence to lead the country's Artificial Intelligence strategy launched in the same year.
The UAE says that it aspires to become one of the leading countries in the field of artificial intelligence by 2031, creating new economic and commercial opportunities, and achieving additional growth of up to 335 billion dirhams ($ 91 billion).
"It seems that the region sees being left behind in the field of new technologies, as a greater risk than anything else," says Cesar Lopez, CEO of Datocom, an artificial intelligence and data analysis solutions company.
"Risking to do what others haven't done leads to the establishment of profitable businesses," he adds.
His company, based in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, uses software to scan and identify damaged containers at Jebel Ali Port in Dubai, one of the world's busiest ports.
"This may be the most advanced port assistance system ever," Lopez says.
But despite AI investments in the Gulf, the lack of a reliable and easily accessible database that is at the core of technological systems remains an obstacle.
"It will take a few years to get there, because the (access to) data is not yet sufficiently available" in the Gulf region, said Stephen Rawson of the American consulting firm Oliver Wyman.
While the Gulf states seemed to be more efficient at centralizing data across different government platforms, other leading countries were able to manage their data sets in better ways and for a longer period.
But Rawson believes that the fact that a country collects the database has its advantages, as private companies in the West do not engage in any business "unless it is a primary profit for them."
• The UAE aspires to become one of the leading countries in the field of artificial intelligence by 2031, creating new economic and commercial opportunities, and achieving additional growth amounting to 335 billion dirhams.
• The annual growth rate of the artificial intelligence market in the Middle East ranges between 20 and 34%, led by the UAE and then Saudi Arabia, and it is expected that artificial intelligence will contribute more than 10% of the gross domestic product of both countries by 2030.
• Artificial intelligence has become part of the education curriculum in Bahrain's primary schools, the UAE plans to use drones for automated delivery, and Dubai aspires to have 25% of all its transportation vehicles become self-driving by 2030.
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