Dubai Metaverse Assembly; and more Middle East AI News
Carrington Malin
⚡𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗻 𝗔𝗜-𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱⚡𝗠𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗹𝗲 𝗘𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗜 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 | CEO Advisor | Artificial Intelligence | Tech Marketing | GTM strategy | Board Advisor
Welcome to Middle East AI News!
Here's this week's Middle East AI News Linkedin newsletter!
Lots of news this week and another big digital technology event: the 𝗗𝘂𝗯𝗮𝗶 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗹𝘆!
This week Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced that it will provide KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) with a 100 petaflop Cray EX supercomputer next year, which they say will be the most powerful in the Middle East.
In other new from Saudi Arabia, NEOM ’s tech company rebrands to Tonomus, and Aramco’s Wa’ed Ventures leads French AI firm Alteia’s funding round.
My main story this week is, of course, the Dubai Metaverse Assembly and some of the take-aways from the two day conference.
My video of the week is the keynote at Dubai Metaverse Assembly from His Excellency Omar Sultan Al Olama, UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications, where the outlined the Dubai Metaverse Strategy.
Scroll down for these stories and much more!
Have a question or want to share your own perspective? Please do leave a comment or send me a message. I'd love to hear from you!
/Carrington
Middle East AI News – 29-Sep-22
🔊 Listen to the podcast version of this newsletter
Dubai sets its metaverse 'North Star'
The Dubai Metaverse Assembly took place at the Museum of the Future and the Jumeirah Emirates Towers in Dubai this week, drawing 500 technology experts, innovators and government policymakers together from more than 40 prominent local and global organisations. Following on from the Dubai Metaverse Strategy announced in July, the event certainly did its job of capturing the attention of global metaverse and Web3 leaders. More than 20,000 people worldwide watched the event virtually.
Many visions, opinions and predictions were shared, including new metaverse phrases such as Gross Metaverse Product and B2A (standing for business-to-avatar). However, the broad consensus at this event was that the future remains hard to predict! No one really knows how long the grand metaverse concepts that the technology industry has will take to come together, when our new and existing virtual worlds will become interoperable or what regulation is required to govern the metaverse. Meta intimated that many of the concepts being talked about today will take decades to become virtual reality.
One thing that technologists, investors, businesses and finance professionals did seem to agree on, was that the metaverse demands forward-looking policymaking and for governments to proactively set the agenda. They also all agreed that this was exactly what the Government of Dubai was doing, as one delegate put it 'at light speed', fast-developing the environment that metaverse, Web3 and DeFi businesses need to create and grow.
Delivered in the presence of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Chairman of The Executive Council of Dubai and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Dubai Future Foundation, H.E Omar Sultan AlOlama Al Olama, UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence delivered a compelling case for why Dubai was well-positioned to become a global metaverse hub. The Dubai Metaverse Strategy will both capitalise on Dubai's strengths and invite metaverse firms to help shape how Dubai leverages the new technologies and develops new policy.
The Dubai Metaverse Strategy echoes some of the Dubai Blockchain Strategy announced in 2016, which included a goal for all Dubai government documents to be moved to blockchain. In recognition of the fact that there were both huge opportunities, yet many unknown facts, the government formed the Global Blockchain Council. Inviting global blockchain leaders and local innovators to contribute, the new council set about identifying how blockchain technology could help government, specific use cases and steps that would need to be taken to move forwards with the emerging technology.
As touched on in last week's Middle East AI News, the Government of Dubai has worked hard to position itself to better identify, assess and act on upcoming digital and technology opportunities. It's open engagement of the private sector, combined with its agility in policymaking now allows the emirate to move forward quickly and purposefully with initiatives like the Dubai Metaverse Strategy, together with supporting policy and regulatory frameworks.. This, in turn, provides developers, innovators and platforms with the confidence to use Dubai as a based to push ahead with their own plans.
Keith Jordan, Vice President Innovation, Mastercard Labs summed it up in comments made on Day Two of the Dubai Metaverse Assembly, "What's really amazing is that the [Dubai] vision is being set from the top down. That's really important, because you need to set that North Star."
And that's what Dubai's become extremely good at. Finding that 'North Star' and setting the coordinates.
Find out more about the Dubai Metaverse Assembly:
More News!
Here's some more interesting news from this week:
Recommended by LinkedIn
AI Policy
Defence
Drones
Education
High Performance Computing
Investment
Metaverse
NEOM
Video of the week
Watch: H.E. Omar Sultan Al Olama's keynote at Dubai Metaverse Assembly
His Excellency Omar Sultan Al Olama, UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications, delivered a keynote on the first day of the Dubai Metaverse Assembly this week, outlining the Dubai Metaverse Strategy.
Watch the video (12 minutes, keynote)
👋 Thanks for reading this week's newsletter!
💡 How was it? Questions? Thoughts? Please do leave a comment below!
If you'd like to receive this Middle East AI News Linkedin newsletter every Thursday, please click the Subscribe button at the top of this page!
If you'd like to receive my original Middle East AI News email earlier on Thursday morning (that would be Wednesday evening in the US), then you can subscribe here to the original.
You can also listen to this week's main Middle East AI News stories (and previous week's newsletter stories) via Spotify.
I'm also setting up a new Discord server for alerts, discussion and Q&A. If you've got a Discord account, get early access to my news server here!
If you want to reach out to me you're welcome to send me a message via Linkedin or an email to carrington@carringtonmalin.com
Web3 advisor & educator
2yThis is super "bullish" not just for Dubai but for the entire web3 ecosystem. Dubai is the clear forerunner on web3 - great to be in Dubai and in the heart of the web3 scene! What a great article Carrington ✔️