Saudi sovereign vehicle, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), and US-based technology firm Google Cloud have announced a strategic partnership to establish a new global artificial intelligence (AI) hub near Dammam in the kingdom's Eastern Province. The new AI hub could contribute up to $71bn to Saudi Arabia's GDP over the next eight years, generating thousands of skilled jobs, a Saudi Press Agency (SPA) report said citing research conducted by London-based Access Partnership. The partnership, unveiled at the 8th Edition of the Future Investment Initiative (FII8), envisages Saudi Arabia as "a leading destination for AI innovation, catering to both local and global enterprises and startups". The AI hub aims to enhance the Saudi workforce by implementing AI programmes for millions of students and professionals, aligning with the national goal of increasing the information and communication technology (ICT) sector by 50%, SPA said. The collaboration will allow customers access to Google Cloud's advanced technology to "drive growth across various industries and improve the delivery of AI applications". The partnership is contingent upon obtaining regulatory approvals and will focus on joint research initiatives for Arabic language models and AI applications tailored to the Saudi market. The endeavor will be supported by Google Cloud's investment in custom silicon, incorporating state-of-the-art tensor processing units (TPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs), along with the Vertex AI platform, designed for developing generative AI applications. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, PIF governor, and Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer of Alphabet and Google, signed the agreement.  The partnership will also focus on enhancing Arabic-language capabilities in Google’s generative AI model family, Gemini, by integrating additional Arabic datasets. (ICE RIYADH)

Fonte notizia: Meed