Summary of the 2-day Virtual Summit Enterprise AI Saudi Arabia 2021

The virtual summit Enterprise AI Saudi Arabia 2021 was held on 4th and 5th of October. Over 160 registered delegates attended the event, which also featured our esteemed speakers, panelists, and thought leaders. The conference included discussions and presentation on topics like transforming business with AI, Building the ai-powered organization, Introducing AI to SME business leaders, Identifying data management hurdles for AI success, Ways by which CIOs are influencing business growth in the digital era, Common roadblocks faced by CDOs and more.

The 1st day of the virtual summit kickstarted on 4th October 2021 with a welcome note by Dr. Jassim Haji, President of the International Group of Artificial Intelligence who chaired the conference and spoke about the necessity to improve our conventional ways of dealing with emerging cyber threats. Following him, our expert, Mr. Salem Al Gharbi -GM -Energy Sector Planning & Advisory National Center for Artificial Intelligence-(NCAI) at SDAIA, provided his insight on the criteria for developing and implementing a successful Data and AI Strategy in the Middle East region.

Our panelists for the day, Samer Soliman, CEO of Arab Financial Services, Souhad Zeineddine, founder of Value Driven Data, and Selim Turki, Head of Data and AI at Careem, all agreed on the importance of scaling up by utilizing AI where applicable. They also stressed on the need for making technology personalized and user-friendly, despite the backend being highly complex. Felix Thomas Wass, CEO & President of DETASAD spoke about the value of Edge Infra and how cloud adoption in sectors may help a country's GDP grow. Lastly, Prashant Tewari, Regional Sales Director at Acceldata, brought the 1st day of the event to a close by giving a presentation on the drawbacks of large data sets, the shift towards the growth of AI and ML models and how Acceldata helps their customers manage their entire data environment while maintaining the quality with their unique 3 step solution- PULSE- TORCH- FLOW.

Another industry that is affected by enormous data volume stored in silos is healthcare. To shed light upon this matter, the second day of the conference commenced with opening remarks from Dr. Mustafa Hasan Qurban, Director ICT at King Fahad Military Medical City (KFMMC), who addressed the use of AI in the healthcare sector and emphasized on the use of external resources to enhance patient satisfaction while ensuring empathy, safety and service is not compromised.

During the panel discussion the moderated by Abdullah Almahmoud, Analytics Manager at stc, accompanied by our expert panelists Aisha A. Alshamsi, Chief Data Officer at Govt. Of Abu Dhabi, Hesham Saad Al Ghamdi, Group Chief Data & Analytics Officer at Abdul Latif Jameel and Muhammad Hadi, Director –Applications and a Subject Matter Expert panelist shared their expertise on the blurring lines between CDO and digital engineer. They went on to explore the use of AI in agriculture and the food sector by providing a real-world example of the efforts of the Abu Dhabi government during the pandemic. At the end of the panel discussion our panelists were asked intriguing questions by the attending delegates, from more details on the various initiatives by the Abu Dhabi government to the most appropriate packages in Python's standard library for data scientists.

The dynamic pair of Dr. Abdulrhman AlKhnaifer, CIO at King Saud University, and Piyush Chowhan, CIO of LULU Group International, brought the session to a close with a bang. The focus of their conversation was on CIOs having a key role in business success in the digital age. Their three-step approach involved determining the use cases in which AI should be used, as tailored solutions produce superior results. Providing your system time to learn and adapt to the ever-growing large volume of data. Finally, from a business standpoint, setting reasonable expectations.

Learn more about this event at https://saudienterpriseai.com/ or email at info@verve-management.com