Empowering AI experts ensures digital future: Sultan Al Olama

Dubai / WAM

The Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Teleworking Applications Office, in cooperation with the National
Programme for Artificial Intelligence, has successfully concluded the fourth edition of UAE AI Camp, which help hone the skills of 7,750 people participating in its activities and workshops.
Organised in partnership with several local entities and international companies specialised in AI and programming, the workshops covered 77 different topics targeting all community segments, including children, school and university students, developers, and programming experts in the field of AI. Topics focused on enhancing their future capabilities, sharing their practical and academic knowledge with international experts in technology and AI fields, and organising proactive workshops that enable them to foresee the features of the digital future.
Commenting on this success, Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Teleworking Applications, stated that providing an environment that invests in future makers and empowering AI experts ensures the digital future, while sharing the knowledge with leading entities and companies contributes to creating the best digital practices in the UAE and implementing AI in vital sectors.
Al Olama said that the number of participants in the UAE AI Camp reflects that people are now aware of the importance of utilising AI and their willingness to learn, execute and flourish in the digital world. “On the other hand, we have an ambitious government that seeks to enable these talents and ensure their growth in the Metaverse, Artificial Intelligence, and programming. That will come through comprehensive programmes, camps, and initiatives to spread the concept of AI and future talents and ensure a strong digital infrastructure in the UAE and its sustainability.”
On this occasion, Mohammed Amin, Sr. Vice President – META, Dell Technologies, said, “We live in a digital world and programming has become a part of everything around us, which imposes major changes on
future jobs.”
Today, coding is an essential skill that school students and youngsters must master to be able to contribute to creating a technology-led future. The Artificial Intelligence for Young People initiative has been a huge success as we enrolled 1,000 students, from 40+ nationalities, aged 9-17, who learnt the basics of AI and coding. We also held 200 coding classes, that focused on teaching the students how to code using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning tools to keep pace with scientific developments in all areas of programming. Our goal at Dell Technologies is to harness the power of technology to drive human progress, so programmes such as this are in line with our vision to use technology to transform lives. We’re honored to have collaborated with the UAE’s Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Teleworking Applications Office to support this programme as it played a key role towards building an ecosystem of future coders who can be part of tomorrow’s digital workforce.”
Bashar Kilani, Managing Director at Accenture Middle East, said that Accenture’s participation in the UAE AI Camp aims to cultivate talent through education and training supporting the accelerated transformation to the digital economy. The focus was on skills that prepare the youth to handle advanced technology infrastructure and build capabilities to create and capture economic value.
UAE AI Camp came this year with many opportunities to teach about AI solutions, implementing knowledge in innovating solutions for future challenges, provide in-depth knowledge about Metaverse, and ways to develop technology and imagine the best future.
Local companies and international companies such as Microsoft, Accenture, Huawei, Careem, Dell, Zoom, Le Wagon, Toda, Jeel Code, IBM, Nobel Brog, MContent, Data Tech Labs, Dubai Municipality, Dubai future labs and Oli Oli participated in the organisation of the workshops and activities in the UAE AI Camp.
Workshops were held in Coders HQ and Theatre of Digital Art and adopted an innovative approach to presenting the topic of AI and programming in an educational way, practical way and even a fun way, such as MicroPets, which was for the children to make a pet using AI and technological techniques to identify different inputs (such as light, movement and sound)and respond through different outputs ( Such as showing other facial expressions, making a sound or moving). Other workshops enhanced utilise of VR headsets to simplify the idea of Metaverse for participants and introduce them to Blockchain technologies and its benefits in real life.
Furthermore, some of the workshops were designed for the parents to introduce them to cybersecurity basics and how to ensure safety in the digital life to protect their children from digital challenges and enhance AI utilisation by all society members.
Several workshops focused on how to enter the audio library world, record the podcast step by step, and how to create electronic video games to focus on AI, future skills, and creativity in programming.