UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan visited the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in a high-profile tour. During his visit, he interacted with students and faculty, emphasizing the critical role of AI education and research for the nation's future development. The visit underscored the UAE's significant commitment to advancing its capabilities and talent pool in the field of artificial intelligence. Why it matters: This direct engagement from the UAE's top leadership highlights the strategic importance of MBZUAI as a cornerstone of the country's national AI agenda and its efforts to foster a knowledge-based economy.
KAUST researchers have discovered that a coral's resilience to rising temperatures is determined by the microorganisms living inside them. The study identifies specific combinations of microeukaryotes and bacteria that enhance heat resistance in corals. This finding provides valuable clues for developing coral probiotics to protect and restore coastal reefs. Why it matters: This breakthrough could lead to effective interventions to combat coral bleaching and preserve vital marine ecosystems in the Red Sea and beyond.
This research evaluates LLMs like ChatGPT, Llama, Aya, Jais, and ACEGPT on Arabic automated essay scoring (AES) using the AR-AES dataset. The study uses zero-shot, few-shot learning, and fine-tuning approaches while using a mixed-language prompting strategy. ACEGPT performed best among the LLMs with a QWK of 0.67, while a smaller BERT model achieved 0.88. Why it matters: The study highlights challenges faced by LLMs in processing Arabic and provides insights into improving LLM performance in Arabic NLP tasks.
The Oil Sustainability Program (OSP), in partnership with PIF, SIRC, NEOM, SIKA, and ClimateCrete, has launched the "NovusCrete" Consortium to innovate in sustainable concrete solutions. The initiative prioritizes localization using materials like seawater, recycled construction waste, and fine sand, supported by entities like the American Concrete Institute (ACI). ClimateCrete, a KAUST spin-off, uses patented technology to transform fine sand into high-quality concrete sand, reducing cement use and CO2 emissions by up to 60%. Why it matters: The consortium and ClimateCrete's technology represent significant steps towards sustainable construction practices in the region, aligning with Saudi Arabia's carbon neutrality goals and fostering a deep-tech startup ecosystem.
This paper introduces Adaptive Entropy-aware Optimization (AEO), a new framework to tackle Multimodal Open-set Test-time Adaptation (MM-OSTTA). AEO uses Unknown-aware Adaptive Entropy Optimization (UAE) and Adaptive Modality Prediction Discrepancy Optimization (AMP) to distinguish unknown class samples during online adaptation by amplifying the entropy difference between known and unknown samples. The study establishes a new benchmark derived from existing datasets with five modalities and evaluates AEO's performance across various domain shift scenarios, demonstrating its effectiveness in long-term and continual MM-OSTTA settings.
KAUST's Ibn Sina Distinguished Professor Carlos Duarte has been awarded the prestigious Japan Prize for his pioneering research on blue carbon and marine ecosystems. Duarte's work demonstrated the significance of marine ecosystems like seagrasses, mangroves, and salt marshes in sequestering and storing carbon dioxide. He coined the term 'blue carbon' and has advised Vision2030 initiatives. Why it matters: This award recognizes the importance of KAUST's research in marine conservation and highlights Saudi Arabia's growing role in ocean-based climate change solutions.
Hamad Bin Khalifa University's Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) introduced Fanar, an Arabic-centric multimodal generative AI platform featuring the Fanar Star (7B) and Fanar Prime (9B) Arabic LLMs. These models were trained on nearly 1 trillion tokens and are designed to address different prompts through a custom orchestrator. Fanar includes a customized Islamic RAG system, a Recency RAG, bilingual speech recognition, and an attribution service for content verification, sponsored by Qatar's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. Why it matters: The platform signifies a major step towards sovereign AI development in Qatar, providing advanced Arabic language capabilities and addressing regional needs.
KAUST researchers have developed a new technology for direct lithium extraction from brine in oilfields and seawater, potentially positioning Saudi Arabia as a major lithium producer. The technology, demonstrated at a pilot scale, allows extraction from low-concentration sources (as low as 20 parts per million) without pollutants. It could increase global lithium resources from 22 million tons to over 230 billion tons. Why it matters: This innovation could transform Saudi Arabia from a lithium importer to a producer, strengthening its energy security and influence in the global clean energy market.
The paper introduces VENOM, a text-driven framework for generating high-quality unrestricted adversarial examples using diffusion models. VENOM unifies image content generation and adversarial synthesis into a single reverse diffusion process, enhancing both attack success rate and image quality. The framework incorporates an adaptive adversarial guidance strategy with momentum to ensure the generated adversarial examples align with the distribution of natural images.
KAUST researchers, partnering with the Queensland Government, discovered 34 previously unknown seagrass meadows in the Red Sea by tracking the foraging behavior of green turtles. They tagged and tracked 53 turtles, revealing that the turtles were approximately 20 times more reliable at identifying seagrass meadows compared to the Allen Coral Atlas. This method also proved to be significantly more cost-effective than traditional methods like airplanes with hyperspectral sensors. Why it matters: This study highlights a novel, cost-effective approach to mapping blue carbon ecosystems, crucial for carbon capture and marine habitat preservation, and provides valuable data for sustainability policies in the Red Sea region.
KAUST, in partnership with MCIT and Hello Tomorrow, has released a report outlining a roadmap for Saudi Arabia to become a global deep tech hub. The report focuses on five pillars: ecosystem, investment, talent, infrastructure, and policy, highlighting the role of R&D in achieving Vision 2030. Deep tech startups in Saudi Arabia raised over $100 million between 2020 and 2022, with a 75% increase in deep tech researchers since 2015. Why it matters: This signals Saudi Arabia's increasing commitment to fostering a local deep tech ecosystem and attracting investment in advanced technologies.