AI has come a long way, from being merely a figment of imagination in the minds of science fiction writers, it has translated to something real in today’s economies and industries, where billion dollar headlines are created. With this, Saudi Arabia upped its stakes by $15 billion in AI, underlining its efforts to establish itself among the major players in the global technology arena. More profoundly than the showcase of such investments, the questions raised at the LEAP 2025 tech show is whether AI is indeed a tool for persistence in the human condition or whether we are on the verge of some identity crisis where AI might know us better than we know ourselves?
For more than a decade, Leap 2025 has served as the Saudi capital city’s stage for the performance of advertisements and arguments related to artificial intelligence investment. Building projects worth about $15 billion have been announced by the kingdom yet again as part of its AI investment promising Leap 2025 tech show. In the last two years, AI has grown so much, almost like one step out of fiction that the next step seems like an inevitable focus on agentive AIs, that is, an artificial intelligence operating in the background to improve human output. Still, with advancements, comes the erosion of freedom and autonomy, possible cloning of identities, as well as disruption of society.
Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030:
As for the announcement of investment in AI, the Saudi Vision 2030 constitutes a long-term economic strategy that would steer the kingdom away from dependence on oil and broaden its scope into technological improvement. AI is therefore earmarked as a prime theme with good discussion at LEAP 2025 on its applications as well as future developments. Other significant AI Investments include a $1.5 billion pact between Groq, the provider of AI infrastructure, and Aramco Digital to enhance AI-powered inference infrastructure and cloud computing, along with a $2 billion agreement between Saudi manufacturing conglomerate ALAT and Lenovo to create an advanced manufacturing center for AI and robotics, an expansion by Google in AI-backed digital infrastructure and new computing cluster, and an ALLaM, Arabic LLM launched by Qualcomm on Qualcomm Cloud AI.
The event also marks Saudi Arabia’s investment since 2022 into technology infrastructure projects, amounting to $42.4 billion, which includes; investment of Databricks of $300 million in AI tools development for development of PaaS, SambaNova committed $140 million to build advanced AI infrastructure, Salesforce invests $500 million in Hyperforce enhancement and the development of regional cloud, and Tencent Cloud allocates $150 million to build AI empower cloud regions in the Middle East.
Agentic AI’s Future and Risks:
A definite theme throughout Leap 2025 seemed to be the transition of artificial intelligence from simple user interplay to agentic AI, where AI becomes the almost invisible assistant who works for the individual. Yaser Al-Onaizan, CEO of the National Center for AI in the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA), elaborated on the transition and said, “The promise of AI is that it will be in everything that we do and we touch every day. It needs to be invisible. It cannot be in your face – it should be listening to you, understanding you and doing things based on your opinion”.
He went on to say that next-generation AI models would do more than just answer queries. They would plan and act without requiring anything more than tacit user consent to book flights or make reservations.
Although the possibilities of AI seem boundless, the experts at the conference also expressed some concerns regarding the risks it poses. Lambert Hogenhout, Chief of data, analytics, and emerging technologies with the United Nations, drew attention to threats against human independence posed by AI. He warned that unchecked AI could contribute to fraud, convolute identity determination, and corrode human-purpose connection to society. He stated, “We want to make sure AI increases living connections, that we are not eliminated. That it makes a good society. The society where a number of people are excluded is not going to work. It will create problems.”
Productivity and Innovation in AI:
Another main point was how firms should best be onward to the AI industry. Cohere’s Canadian Generation AI CEO, Aidan Gomez, compared generative AI to acting as CPUs, stating that generative AI is valuable only for how it integrates and actually is implemented for business specifications. He said, “A generative model is kind of like a CPU – it’s a general piece of technology. You could deploy it inside any vertical for any purpose, like a CPU. But, in and of itself, just owning a CPU isn’t valuable. It’s what you build with it that is valuable. So, for that piece, you do have to be technical. You need to be a developer, to be able to build something on top of this model to create value on the other side.”
Saudi Arabia’s $15 billion investment in AI is a key sign of the country’s desire to become a progressive world leader in AI. Discussions at Leap 2025 pointed out AI’s enormous potential to drive productivity and the need to address pertinent ethical issues. With Vision 2030 as the kingdom’s inspiration, harnessing AI for development versus human autonomy will be the key counterpoint before the kingdom’s decision makers, businesses, and society.
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