Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced KAUST's new strategy to translate research into economic innovations, aligning with national priorities like Health & Wellness, Sustainable Environment, and Energy leadership. A key initiative is launching the National Transformation Institute for Applied Research (NTI) to accelerate tech commercialization. KAUST will also establish a $200M fund for local and international high-tech firms and partner with entities like NEOM on the Reefscape Restoration Initiative. Why it matters: This signals a major strategic shift for KAUST, aiming to boost its impact on Saudi Arabia's economic diversification and technology leadership in alignment with Vision 2030.
G42's Core42 has released Jais, a collection of Arabic large language models, including a 13B parameter version. Jais-13B is trained on a 395B token dataset containing Arabic and English text. According to the blog post, Jais-13B achieves state-of-the-art results on Arabic NLP benchmarks. Why it matters: This release establishes a new benchmark for Arabic language AI, potentially enabling more sophisticated and culturally relevant applications.
G42's Core42 has released Jais, a new Arabic large language model. Jais includes 13 billion parameters and was trained on a dataset of 126B tokens, including 43B Arabic tokens. According to the developers, Jais achieves state-of-the-art results on Arabic benchmarks and competitive performance on English benchmarks. Why it matters: Jais represents a significant step forward for Arabic NLP, providing a powerful new tool for researchers and developers in the region.
MBZUAI has released Jais and Jais-chat, two new open generative large language models (LLMs) with a focus on Arabic. The 13 billion parameter models are based on the GPT-3 architecture and pretrained on Arabic, English, and code. Evaluation shows state-of-the-art Arabic knowledge and reasoning, with competitive English performance.
This paper introduces Pulmonary Embolism Detection using Contrastive Learning (PECon), a supervised contrastive pretraining strategy using both CT scans and EHR data to improve feature alignment between modalities for better PE diagnosis. PECon pulls sample features of the same class together while pushing away features of other classes. The approach achieves state-of-the-art results on the RadFusion dataset, with an F1-score of 0.913 and AUROC of 0.943.
Excyton, a startup based at KAUST, has developed a novel display technology called “TurboLED” that reduces power consumption by 50% and increases the color range rendered on displays to 76%. The technology utilizes a six sub-pixel format (light and deep RGB) compared to the standard three, saving energy by using lighter colors most of the time. Excyton received $2 million in funding from KAUST Innovation Ventures and collaborated with KAUST to develop the technology. Why it matters: This innovation could significantly improve the battery life of mobile devices while also enhancing display quality, providing a competitive advantage for devices manufactured in the region.
KAUST and LONGi, a solar energy company, have signed an MoU to collaborate on solar energy innovation. The partnership aims to develop and deploy solar technologies, focusing on improving the efficiency of photovoltaic technologies. Joint projects will include testing PV module concepts, developing new materials, and optimizing performance, alongside talent development programs. Why it matters: This collaboration aligns with Saudi Vision 2030 and the Saudi Green Initiative, fostering sustainable energy solutions and local expertise in the region.