The Ministry of Transport, Communications, and Information Technology (MTCIT) hosted a conference at Crowne Plaza Muscat OCEC yesterday to promote the large-scale localisation of next generation Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to help advance Oman’s Digital Economy objectives.
The forum was held under the auspices of Dr Khalifa bin Abdullah al Barwani, CEO of the National Center for Statistics and Information (NCSI). In attendance were high level representatives of a number of relevant government agencies.
Later in remarks to the Observer, Dr Ali al Shidhani, Under-Secretary Communications and Information Technology, said the emphasis on AI and advanced technologies is one of the executive programmes of the National Program for the Digital Economy.
“The symposium's goal is to familiarize the attendees with the latest generation of AI, also known as generative AI and inventive AI. Of course, the most well-known of its applications, ChatGPT, has brought about a very significant information revolution in the field of economics, as well as disruptive innovative in the corporate and education sectors. We hope the forum for the attendees to be able to harness the powerful potential and opportunities associated with these AI tools.” Various presentations during the forum will review, among other things, the need for introducing legislation to support the use of such modern technologies, highlight the most significant technologies that use generative AI and opportunities for their use, highlight investment opportunities through platforms that are based on new AI, and outline recommendations to support the broader uptake of these technologies.
According to Hassan bin Fida Hussain al Lawati, Head of the National Program for Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Technologies, the world is moving quickly to take advantage of AI to perform tasks previously done solely by humans. AI tools can also be used to unlock new value from data, he said.
“The National Digital Economy initiative will help contribute to boosting the contribution of the digital economy from 2 per cent of GDP in 2021 to 10 per cent in 2040. Additionally, the initiative aspires for Oman to hold top positions globally in all of the digital economy metrics tracked by the Oman Vision 2040, including the e-government development index, the network readiness index, and the readiness index for the future of production. The program also includes a collection of medium-term executive initiatives, including the infrastructure program, the digital industry initiative, the e-commerce initiative, the artificial intelligence initiative, the advanced technologies initiative, and the space initiative,” Al Lawati explained.
The Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology, he said, has begun working on the executive program for artificial intelligence and advanced technologies. This is being crafted with the support of experts from the public and private sectors, academics, and entrepreneurs specialized in those fields, he noted.
The new generation of AI uses machine learning algorithms that create new data from an existing data set. These algorithms use statistical techniques to learn patterns in the data and then use those patterns to create new data that is similar to the original. Several platforms that use the current generation of artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT, Dall-E-2 OpenAI, and other platforms that use generative algorithms, have lately emerged in numerous fields, including image creation, natural language processing, music composition, and game development.
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