It’s about keeping an open mind, testing these technologies and working in a constructive way.” If the region embraces AI and these technologies openly, whatever happened with the printing press will not happen in the future. The region needs to embrace that wholeheartedly. “The region isn’t isolated - whatever applies here applies to the rest of world and there are aspects of technology we need to pay attention to, such as AI, cloud computing and storage, and biotechnology. “It’s important for all governments to look at it that way,” he added. “And if we don’t embrace it, we’ll be in the Dark Ages compared to countries that are.”Īl-Olama spoke of challenges that the region needs to address and opportunities it needs to grasp. “When you look at technologies that will shape the next century, AI is at the forefront of that,” he said. He mentioned the printing press, which was banned from the Muslim world for 240 years. It was technology - it took us from being science-advanced to backwards compared to other countries.” “As a young man, throughout my life, I’ve always tried to understand why the Muslim world was stagnating while the rest of world was progressing. “In general, these topics enlighten people throughout history,” he said. “It’s a significant commitment from the region to the future.”Īccording to Omar bin Sultan Al-Olama, the UAE’s Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, science and technology will have the greatest impact on the region in the future. “No other region has ever done this at this scale,” Chen said. Udacity has partnered with multiple governments in the region to augment that education system while leveraging the digital literacy in young people. That is beginning to change as well, she explained, as Arab millennials are more digitally connected than ever before. The education system has a challenging job to prepare many of those people for private sector jobs. And many of those jobs are not contributing to the local economy but instead are consuming government resources.” “However, the region also has one of the world’s highest rates of youth unemployment, as 30 percent is double the world’s average. “A large number of young people would historically be considered an asset to the economy,” Chen said at the EmTech MENA conference on emerging technology in Dubai last week. In the Gulf, 60 percent of the population is currently under the age of 25. This is coming from a place of necessity as the region experiences a boom in the youth population.” “The region is heavily investing in education, with an average of 18 percent of total government spending versus the global average of 14 percent. “Leaders in the Arab world are embracing the future and taking aggressive steps to leapfrog past limitations,” said Clarissa Chen, chief operating officer at Udacity. Regionally, a number of organizations, such as Udacity a company teaching nanodegrees - basic programming skills - are at the forefront of this movement, with Arab citizens entering the field of nanotechnology and coding in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE. But tech experts believe it could also create new jobs and lift the economy. DUBAI: As technology continues to change the world we live in, the Gulf is looking to its growing youth demographic to take it into the future, leading the way with artificial intelligence, robotics, automation and machine learning.īy 2030, 15 percent of the world’s jobs - and 400 million workers - could be displaced by automation.
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