Ai Everything to highlight UAE’s emergence as global AI testbed

Business Bureau, Gulf Today

The Dubai World Trade Center (DWTC) is set to host the first-ever edition of what is to become the most influential Artificial Intelligence (AI) event to date — Ai Everything (AiE). The summit will run from April 30 to May 1, 2019 and will witness the highest calibre of AI talent engage with a thriving global AI community.

The two-day event will be held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai and will be hosted by the UAE’s National Programme for Artificial Intelligence with the support of global association partners International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), and in strategic partnership with Smart Dubai. The ground-breaking gathering of the world’s foremost thought leaders, inventors, practitioners and researchers from governments, businesses, NGOs and academia is geared to reimagine the future of AI and to demonstrate how this deep technology will be harnessed to implement impactful change across the world.  

AiE will envision how the UAE has emerged as a global testbed for AI innovation and look at ways to create new vital markets that unlock high economic value for a sector that is expected to contribute $320 billion) to the Middle East economy by 2030. Inspired by the strategy to establish the UAE as an innovative AI investment destination, the summit seeks to convene the world’s leading investment community to explore integrated smart solutions that ultimately boost the performance of private and public sector entities across all levels imaginable, while creating a vibrant AI start-up and educational ecosystem.

Ai Everything will unravel real world use cases across industries, and forge collaborations and partnerships, hosting over 130 influential speakers, including globally recognised AI-supremo, Dr. Andrew Ng, Co-founder of Coursera and Google Brain and Adjunct Professor at Stanford University. Dr. Ng was also named among Time’s 100 Most Influential Persons In the World3) for his ground-breaking implementation of AI at Baidu and Google.

Noteworthy global visionaries speaking at the event also include Audrey Azoulay, Director General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); Dr. Eng Lim Goh, VP and CTO at HPC and AI at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and the AI lead behind NASA-Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s most powerful computer in space; Dr. Li Xu, Co-founder and CEO of SenseTime; Seng Yee Lau, Senior Executive Vice President and Chairman of Group Marketing and Global Branding at Tencent; and Dr Ben Goertzel, CEO at SingularityNET, Chief Scientist at Hanson Robotics the developer of the social humanoid robot star Sophia and Chairman of the Artificial General Intelligence Society.

The high-octane content at Ai Everything will feature various industry tracks including Education, Finance, Healthcare, Transportation, Retail, Marketing, Energy, Government & Smart Cities & Creative Economy. High-level speakers come from leading firms and institutions, including Airbus, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Tencent, Huawei, Rolls Royce, KLM, DHL, Pfizer, Intel, Amazon, HSBC, AIG, Lloyds Banking Group, Shell, Honeywell, Halliburton, Walmart, Sephora, a part of luxury giants LVMH, Expedia, Facebook and Alibaba.

“The potential of AI to create outcomes for society, advancing how we live and work, is universally recognized: researchers can develop advanced treatments for a specific individual; municipalities can reduce car accidents by predicting risk conditions on the basis of weather, traffic, events. To harness the full potential of AI, a multidisciplinary approach is required, combining advanced technologies, vertical competencies, policies and infrastructures, innovation and research. Hewlett Packard Enterprise recently announced a participation in the World Economic Forum’s initiative to end world hunger by 2030, bringing the best of technology to advance our lives and communities,” said Fabio Fontana, VP & Managing Director, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Middle East.

Transforming into a global marketplace for deployable AI solutions, the exhibition will serve as a knowledge exchange platform for bringing those solutions into the mainstream. The show will convene 100+ of the world’s most revolutionary AI tech companies and start-ups from 30+ countries.

“After 25 years of cutting-edge research through our Microsoft Research Division, we find ourselves on the cusp of a Digital Transformation enabled by a generational shift in AI computing. As an industry we are building a truly connected world where machines, people and businesses will be automated or augmented with advanced AI capabilities.

The promise of AI is ground-breaking, and Microsoft is working with its customers and partners across more than 15 industries to enabled new AI-infused scenarios.