Planned $500 billion Saudi Robotic City hosts cabinet meeting

Bloomberg

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman held his first-ever cabinet meeting in Neom, a planned $500 billion futuristic city that will host more robots than people in a desolate peninsula in the kingdom’s northwest.
The sci-fi city on the Red Sea coast is designed to represent Saudi Arabia’s efforts to transform itself away from oil.
The 82-year-old monarch’s visit there for a cabinet meeting and, according to the official Saudi Press Agency, to “spend some time in rest and recreation,” suggested a show of
support for the project. This is a “historic beginning for a city of dreams,” Bader Al Asaker, the head of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s private office, said.The kingdom’s top economic council also convened a meeting in Neom.
In announcing the city in October, the prince said the metropolis would promise a lifestyle not available in today’s Saudi Arabia, and a “civilisation leap for humanity.”
It will have a link “with artificial intelligence, with the Internet of Things — everything,” the crown prince said in an interview in October after Neom was announced. The ambitious plan includes a bridge spanning the Red Sea, connecting the proposed city to Egypt and the rest of Africa.