KAUST hosted a regional Women in Data Science (WiDS) conference, part of a global event held at over 100 regional institutions led by Stanford University. The KAUST event featured exclusively female speakers and aimed to highlight data science research and applications. KAUST is launching a 'Women in Data Sciences and Technology' initiative to support women's education and careers in the field. Why it matters: This initiative can help address the underrepresentation of women in data science in Saudi Arabia and the broader region.
This paper focuses on analyzing surveys of women entrepreneurs in the UAE using machine learning techniques. The goal is to extract relevant insights from the data to understand the current landscape and predict future trends. The study aims to support better business decisions related to women in entrepreneurship.
MBZUAI's Women in AI (WAI) club, founded by master’s students Asma Hashmi and Ameera Bawazir, aims to increase female representation in AI at MBZUAI and the UAE. The club aligns with the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, addressing the underrepresentation of women in AI globally (22%). MBZUAI reports 31% female students in its first cohort and hopes to increase this, supported by faculty like Prof. Najwa Aaraj. Why it matters: This initiative highlights efforts to close the gender gap in AI within the UAE's leading AI university, fostering a more inclusive and diverse tech ecosystem.
The ArabJobs dataset is a new corpus of over 8,500 Arabic job advertisements collected from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The dataset contains over 550,000 words and captures linguistic, regional, and socio-economic variation in the Arab labor market. It is available on GitHub and can be used for fairness-aware Arabic NLP and labor market research.
The Symposium on Data Mining and Applications (SDMA 2014) was organized by MEGDAM to foster collaboration among data mining and machine learning researchers in Saudi Arabia, GCC countries, and the Middle East. The symposium covered areas such as statistics, computational intelligence, pattern recognition, databases, Big Data Mining and visualization. Acceptance was based on originality, significance and quality of contribution.
KAUST is launching the "Dear AI" campaign and hackathon to address gender bias and under-representation of women and Saudi/Arab people in AI, after finding AI image tools return only 1% women for prompts like "imagine entrepreneur." The campaign calls for accurate representation in AI datasets from Saudi Arabia and beyond. KAUST notes that 47% of graduates in their AI academy are women. Why it matters: This campaign highlights the need for more inclusive AI training data and addresses gender imbalances in STEM fields in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia signaled a growing interest in AI technologies for defense during the World Defense Show. Saudi defense company, Scopa Industries, is undergoing a transformation to become a major player in the sector. The event highlighted the Kingdom's focus on integrating advanced technologies into its defense capabilities. Why it matters: This signals a strategic push towards technological self-sufficiency and enhanced defense capabilities within the Saudi defense industry.