AI to facilitate and enhance Oman's economic growth
MUSCAT, JAN 27
Events of the Oman AI Summit 2025 commenced yesterday, Monday, January 27, in Muscat under the auspices of the Governor of Dhofar, His Highness Sayyid Marwan bin Turki al Said.
The 2-day forum, organised by Omani AI Startup Tazeez AI in collaboration with The Future Event, brings together regional and global industry professionals to address key topics in artificial intelligence.
In his keynote address, Hassan Fida al Lawati, National Programme Head for Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Technology at the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology (MTCIT), highlighted the significance of AI in the country.
According to the official, Artificial Intelligence, inspired by His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik's Royal Directives, is positioned as a tool to enhance and facilitate economic growth in the country.
The Sultanate of Oman first launched the Artificial Intelligence executive programme in 2022. However a revised version was published in September 2024 to include generative AI and global advancements. The revision, according to the Programme Head, reflects a nationwide agenda rather than just an executive plan.
The plan, according to Al Lawati, aims to use AI as a tool to enhance the productivity of economic sectors contributing to the local GDP, and developmental sectors such as education and health.
The current programme focuses on three main pillars: AI adoption, AI localisation and AI Governance. It currently underlines 32 initiatives serving each pillar to be executed by the Ministry and other stakeholders.
Notable AI projects include the Omani Large Language Model (LLM), which aims to compile Oman's national culture and heritage, the AI Studio which aims to bridge the gap between AI demand and supply in Oman while also fostering an AI ecosystem, and the Open Data initiative which aims to provide open public data for AI training.
In his conclusion, Al Lawati emphasised that Oman does not aim to be only a consumer of AI, but a producer of AI as well.
Furthermore, according to Shuai Yi, CTO of Riyadh-based AI solutions provider SenseTime MEA, the size of the AI market including software and hardware is expected to grow by 7.6 times from $233 billion currently to $1.772 trillion 2032. He added that AI technology is projected to unleash a value of between $29 trillion and $40 trillion to the global economy by 2040.
In Oman, the sector is expected to reach a value of $600 million by 2030, unleashing a potential value of $10 billion to $17 billion dollars to the economy by 2040, he added.
Meanwhile, Pavel Vishnyakov, Senior Solutions Architect at Huawei Cloud Middle East, emphasised the importance of AI localisation.
"Large models that are generally available, like open models [such as] LLaMA, for example, [are all] trained on [vast] amounts of English datasets, and they're not performing very well when it comes to [local language-specific] and maybe local cultural context."
He explained that the creation of industry specific AI models requires data privy to those industries, which can invoke security concerns. 'Open data for general knowledge is always available, but industry-specific data sometimes includes know-how or commercial secrets that companies are unwilling to share. This is especially true for governments, as training AI for the government involves sensitive data. When using a pre-trained model, it may involve working with both sensitive and confidential data,' he shared.
'This data should never leave the country and must stay inside. So, you have to keep control of this data. That's why AI should be localized. And here, we talk about not only localization but also sovereignty. AI must be sovereign. AI sovereignty is a hot topic today, especially in Middle Eastern and Asian countries, due to significant differences in language, culture, politics, and religion compared to Western countries,' he added.
The first day of the forum included several keynote speeches and panel discussions addressing the role of AI and Oman Vision 2040, the role of AI in banking and AI in leadership and decision making.
Workshops addressed the role of commercialisation and governance in creating a sustainable AI industry, AI in Fintech, and the use of generative AI for leadership and organisational growth.
An exhibition showcasing 50 companies from 40 countries also opened in parallel with the forum.
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