• Officials said the partnership will help to fund, catalyze and advance AI for sustainable impact
• It will also guide policy for AI innovation while focusing on addressing poverty, diseases and illiteracy

Zaynab Khojji

LONDON: Saudi Arabia and the World Bank announced on Wednesday a collaboration to make the world a better place with artificial intelligence (AI).

The partnership was announced at the Global AI Summit in Riyadh and aims to develop AI with economic leaders and developing nations.

It will build on Saudi Arabia’s expertise gained from the Kingdom’s AI related achievements and the World Bank’s experience in developing digital economy agendas, the summit heard.

Officials said the partnership will help to fund, catalyze and advance AI for sustainable impact. It will also guide policy for AI innovation while focusing on addressing poverty, diseases and illiteracy.

Saudi Arabia and the World Bank announce "LEAVING NO ONE BEHIND" initiative to harness the potential of AI to support sustainable development goals#GlobalAISummithttps://t.co/fpCkFHbxTq pic.twitter.com/mPMOVzpBTW

— Global AI Summit (@globalaisummit) October 21, 2020

“We believe it’s very important that everyone should have access to AI. Every nation should be able to leverage and get the potential benefits from utilising AI,” the director of the Kingdom’s National Information Center Esam Al-Wagait said.

Al-Wagait described the World Bank collaboration as “beautiful,” and said that almost 70 percent of Vision 2030 goals are directly or indirectly linked to AI.

“We have the aspiration to take the leading role in helping other nations… I believe the result of this collaboration will be very beneficial to a lot of other countries and developing nations,” he said.

“We believe we can help those nations and the people of those nations to utilise AI for the betterment of society.”

The World Bank’s Vice President for Infrastructure Makhtar Diop also praised the partnership.

“I am very glad that the World Bank is associated to the work that you are doing currently because we are seeing increasing demand through our client countries on the use of AI, and in all of our initiatives we are currently mainstreaming the use of AI,” Makhtar Diop said.