Webinar Artificial Intelligence Technologies

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Good morning and good afternoon to the  Australia UAE Business Council members   and our guests. My name is Ellecia Saffron and  I’m an advisory board member for the AUSUAE   Business Council which was launched in 2020.  Today's event is on artificial intelligence,   it's our third webinar of the group and we  have three fantastic panellists that will be   speaking with us today about all things AI. The  first speaker will be Mr Daniel Keys from Xamplify  

and we are also joined by Mr Talal Al Kaissi from  G42 Cloud and Mr Keith Strier hopefully will be   joining us from NVIDIA. For today's session  first of all though I’d like to welcome HE   Mr Badr Al-Olama who is the Co-Chair of the  AUSUAE Business Council who's representing him and   Mr Christopher Pyne today to  welcome participants and guests. Thank you, good morning everyone welcome to  this webinar. I’m very pleased that you found   some time to join us it's obviously a very  important topic everyone around the world   is talking about the importance of technology  and the importance of artificial intelligence.   In the UAE itself we have a Minister for  AI demonstrating the importance that the   UAE is placing on the artificial intelligence  sector and in essence this webinar is the result   of us at the Australia UAE Business Council  deciding on forming a working group to advance   artificial intelligence technologies; a working  group that will work over the next 12 months   to explore opportunities between the  members and hopefully present these   opportunities and any challenges associated  in terms of progressing business government   policy type of partnership and collaboration  between Australia and the United Arab Emirates. I’d like to say that both Australia and the  UAE share the same vision and belief in the   pivotal role of technology we believe that  AI or artificial intelligence is at the heart   of these transformative  technologies and if deployed wisely   it could breed a lot of social business and  government and governance benefits to our nations.  

I hope you enjoy these discussions and I’d like  to welcome our panellists, both Daniel and Talal   for those of you that are going to be  hearing from them I’m quite excited   because I’ve known Talal for quite some time  he is extremely passionate about technology   but more so more importantly so he represents  one of the most important companies in the UAE   that is actually championing technology which is  Group 42 or G42. Over to you Ellie. Thank you for   giving us this opportunity to actually share the  welcome and also share some information about G42   to our members. Thank you Your Excellency and so  I’d like to introduce firstly, Mr Daniel Keys who   is the Head of Futures and Innovation at Xamplify  he has over 25 years’ experience in ICT delivery   and has held senior digital and ICT leadership  roles at the Civil Aviation Safety Authority,   Digital Transformation Agency and the  Australian Tax Office. Before joining the   Australian Government, Daniel held leadership  roles in a number of private sector companies   and established a small ICT consultancy  specializing in ICT strategy and architecture.   However, today he's known as an inspirational  leader of large digital transformation programs   and he's most recently served as Chief Information  Officer at the Commonwealth Department of Health   leading the delivery of many solutions in  response to the recent Covid-19 pandemic.   Hi Daniel. Thank you very much Ellie for the  introduction and thanks to all the panellists  

and all the webinar guests for joining us.  Look we're really excited here at Xamplify   to be a part of the Australia UAE Business  Council and we just I guess like to offer an   Australian perspective of what we're seeing with  regards to artificial intelligence. I thought   I’d touch on a few different aspects of what  we see here in Australia the first one being   awareness of artificial intelligence and its  maturity within various different sectors. We see   some sectors such as our mining sector embracing  and really driving change using artificial   intelligence but on the whole in Australia, we  see a real lag of sort of adoption of sort of   modern artificial intelligence capabilities  within solutions and I think at the core of   that is that people really don't understand  the sort of practical implications of AI in   business and how to transform their businesses.  It sounds complicated, it sounds dangerous,   and people don't understand where the benefits  are and really struggle to see the real value.   I think there's a lack in Australia of real  resounding success stories and we've also   really got a lack of really tangible return on  investment metrics that can be used to justify   an investment as significant investment  in artificial intelligence. So, I think  

that on the whole there's really quite a lack  of awareness and there's a lot of work that   we need to do within Australia to educate not  just the technical people but senior leaders   business leaders and also the community  on the use, the ethical and safe use of   artificial intelligence and the way that  it can change the way we live our lives.   What we are seeing for example Australia’s lead  artificial intelligence integrator, we are seeing   an emerging demand around four key themes  of artificial intelligence in Australia.   The first one is around object detection so real  time object recognition. You know leveraging  

some innovative technologies we have in Australia  that are providing a plug-and-play type platform   that allow you to pick up different  recognition technologies and use them for   real-time alerting and monitoring of primarily  law enforcement and national security use cases.   That's quite an easy use case for  people to understand because, you know,   there's an instant way to, I guess, validate that  return on investment and the value proposition   that's associated with something that's  done quite a traditional and manual process   into an automated artificial intelligence  engine. It's quite a tangible thing, so people   are embracing that the second sort of area is  really around natural language processing and   it's primarily being used at the moment in service  delivery and in integrated knowledge management   and really I think the use case that's  being embraced the most within Australia is   multi-language speech to text and some of  that automated you know document discovery   sentiment analysis and those types of natural  language processes we've seen a push also in   Australia around the delivery of digital twins  so using you know digital representations of   physical systems to try and drive new insights  and intelligent operations and there's quite   an innovative company in Australia called green  gravity who are doing, they're basically an   innovative Australian company has is using disused  mine shafts to drop weights and transfer energy   to and from the grid who are using a digital twin  to start to optimize an interface to the energy   grid so there's quite, I guess a push to automate  and optimize at a global level using digital   twins is another area that we see of demand in  artificial intelligence and probably finally is   the scientific computing, so in academia  and medical research and scientific compute   using the core artificial intelligence enabling  capabilities it exemplified we sort of span the   full breadth of the AI stack from strategy  training consultancy right through down into   the enabling capabilities and the data and we have  a strong partnership with it, with NVIDIA I’m sure   Keith will talk about this leveraging the amazing  capabilities of the technology that NVIDIA provide   and finally I think, the last thing I wanted to  touch on is some of the barriers and I’m sure this   will be a topic that will be touched on across  the board in today's webinar is yeah we do see,   probably awareness and education is one of the  biggest barriers to adoption of AI in Australia   but we've also got many of the other issues such  as you know ethical use of AI explainability,   you know security privacy, etc. But fundamentally  I think the biggest barrier that we need to   overcome is sort of an acceptance both from  business leaders, the tech community but also the   broader Australian community around the use of AI  and how that can be done to benefit the community   so thank you very much for the opportunity  to come and speak with you all today,   I really appreciate it and I’m  really looking forward to hearing   Talal and Keith's perspectives, obviously  from other parts of the world. Thanks Ellie. Thank you Daniel that was an  interesting intro and I look forward to   fleshing out some of the points you made during  the webinar next up I’d like to introduce Mr Talal   Al-Khasi. He's the CEO of G42 Cloud. Talal joined  G42 in 2020 after two years at the UAE space   agency where he served as a Senior Advisor to the  Director General prior to this role Talal served   at the UAE embassy in Washington DC for nine  years as a senior advisor for commercial affairs   at the UAE trade and commercial office and  led the US-UAE space affairs collaboration.  

Prior to that he's worked in the energy sector  at KBR where he led business development efforts   for the GCC region in the downstream petrochemical  segment and was based between Houston, Dubai,   and Koba in Saudi Arabia. Talal serves on boards  at high level international bodies including the   world economic forum space technology council  a board of new space capital and the board of   Saya Corp Capital, the board of world space  league and also Takalam online counselling   currently in his role at G42 Cloud. He's been  appointed to bring about the next phase of the   company's evolution maximizing internal potential  while innovating and creating customer value in   new and adjacent areas welcome to the webinar,  Talal and we're pleased to have you here. 

Thank you, thank you Ellie and thank you your  excellency Badhir it's good to see you again   Daniel, Keith, travel panellists it's really a  pleasure in fact I've known Keith for a while   and Daniel I think we've got a lot in common  in both how our companies operate and in the   partnerships we have including that with NVIDIA.  NVIDIA actually powers the supercomputer we have   and we were speaking before the call of how  fond I am of the Australia-UAE relations in   fact in my previous role that Ellie mentioned with  respect to the space industry. I had the pleasure   and privilege of being part of the agreement that  we signed between both countries and was able to   visit Adelaide on a couple of occasions and worked  closely with our Ambassador to Australia His   Excellency Abdullah Zabusi and I just so imagined  sent a note over here so it's good to see familiar   people amongst us so let me maybe take a step  back and explain a few things about G42 just for   the unfamiliar. You know we're an AI and cloud  computing company at our core and with that we   were established in 2018 formally as G42 but prior  to that there was a big data analytics business   intelligence company that was started over here by  our group. Our CEO who had come over from the US  

where he worked in the business intelligence  domain and was lured to the UAE's open,   the government's open lab environment per se in  allowing and enabling innovation in this domain to   flourish by having one thing that I think was hard  to come by in multiple other areas. When you're   trying to move the needle on AI and as Badhir  mentioned you know we have a Minister of AI and   our Government embraces technology in a way that I  think you know we're able to move quicker because   of the population dynamics and the, you know,  the need for technology to help us digitally   transform. I think one thing that our group  CEO Peng saw here that he didn't see when he   was working for the likes of Facebook and other  big clients in the US that had the volume or you   know companies that are involved in AI that have  a need, speed and velocity was the variety element   and the variety element over here that third which  is critical I think for AI was what really kind of   showed him the opportunity at hand here in the  UAE so started up as a business intelligence   entity. Very analogous to what you see and you  know with microstrategy or even talenteer and   others and then quickly morphed into a lot more  than just that by seeing the power of AI and how   it how applicable it is to multiple industries  that we now operate in and so we quickly,   in 2018, when the opportunity presented  itself morphed into first of all an AI   institute. The inception institute of artificial  intelligence which we own and operate till today  

and started off more as a fundamental AI research  organization with a hundred or so data scientists   solving the you know hardest problems in computer  vision NLP and machine learning to now more of an   applied research entity and then the spin  out from that was the Mohammed bin Zayed   University of AI which now continues to focus on  fundamental research but as a private company we   are a for-profit entity so we quickly pivoted  into applied research and started looking at   industry verticals and thus the birth of G42  came about and the low-hanging fruit at that   time was the energy industry obviously something  that the UAE flourishes in and we were looking at   efficiencies and optimizations in that domain that  apply that AI was applicable to so we structured   a joint venture with our national oil company  Adnock and we do everything there from you know   workflow optimization using AI to computer  vision based borehole analysis. Looking at   seismic data and looking at best places to drill  saving you know billions of dollars but more so   hours or actually weeks and armies of geologists  and what they would have had to go through because   we could just run that through a supercomputer  thankfully, powered by NVIDIA and so that's how   kind of G42 evolved and now we have multiple  different industry verticals powered by the   brain power let's say with the AI institute  and then the muscle power which is   our data centre infrastructure our connectivity  layer which helps us with optimizing latency and   we own the full value chain of both those and then  our cloud compute infrastructure that orchestrates   and supports delivering that AI solution to the  multiple different industry verticals oil and gas   and energy being one of them and then healthcare  where we're doing our population genomics program   also using sequencers from illumina ont bgi and  then NVIDIA for even processing to other areas   that we can also talk about so I sit at the point  of the cloud layer where I’m actually supporting   not only our group and enabling the different  industry verticals we have from analytics to   healthcare to energy but also now increasingly  becoming more of a cloud services provider   analogous to the likes of AWS and others but we're  more of a national hyperscaler and we're not, you   know, growing in the geographic footprint except  for where we are deploying a similar architecture   on a sovereign cloud level which we can also  talk about later in different countries around   the world as well. So I'll stop there, I just  wanted to give that overarching perspective as to   what G42 is the importance to the UAE’s national  digital transformation agenda and where we play as   an implementer and an executor of that vision  and then where I sit at the G42 cloud layer. Thank you Talal that was great. And now I'd  like to welcome Mr Keith Striyer who's the   Vice President of Worldwide AI Initiatives at  NVIDIA. Keith leads an initiative called AI  

nations which is a worldwide program that helps  government leaders and stakeholders develop plans   to implement AI to advance national priorities  and drive economic growth. Keith has worked with   Senior Leaders across public and private sectors  in all markets to help them understand the new art   of the possible when AI GPU accelerated computing  autonomous machines and IOT are deployed at scale   he's a former global AI leader for EY and formerly  the Global CDO for Deloitte with a 20-year record   as a trusted advisor practice leader and corporate  innovator he's particularly proud of his role   advising the Government of Estonia. the United  Nations Center for AI and robotics at the Hague   and Canadian blood services. Keith's  role as the lead AI strategy advisor   to the CIO of Estonia was profiled in the  Wall Street journal in November 2018. Thank  

you for joining us Keith, it's great to see you. Hi, glad to see you. H hope you can hear me okay   and it's great to see your friends  tell Alex nice to see you as well.   Thank you for that for those kind comments  just seeing you on the screen just reminds   me of what a small world we have here, or maybe  I don't get out enough. I need to make some more   new connections but I don't think that's true I  just think I keep running into amazing people so   and Daniel thank you as well for inviting NVIDIA  to participate you know I was thinking about this   a little bit earlier as I was getting ready to  call that I think one thing that NVIDIA well so as   was suggesting and Daniel as well one thing  that the UAE and Australia have in common,   many things I think and one of the lesser known  things is their relationship with NVIDIA and we're   quite proud of that. Obviously the relationship  was separate but maybe now there's an opportunity   to do to create more of a magic triangle sort  of between us and that's actually quite exciting   but one of the you know one of the other things  I was thinking is that I think you know both the   UAE and Australia in terms of the size of your  economy and the size of your population you know   probably are probably often underestimated you  know in terms of the potential and impact you have   on the world and I think you, both nations punch  above their weight and have exceeded expectations   particularly in this new chapter around artificial  intelligence right and let's not forget it's real   it's very new, right? I mean if you just go  back five years ago uh there wasn't a nation   in the world that had a national AI strategy,  mind you a Minister of AI, you know and that   that wasn't even really conceptually possible and  so this whole chapter in sort of modern technology   policy and economic policy is less than five years  old so it's pretty new and yet the incredible pace   of innovation and collaboration actually  and those are you know those are both very   interesting adjacent themes is is very important.  You know NVIDIA’s history in NVIDIA shares this  

kind of common theme with Australia and the UAE  because frankly NVIDIA is one of the world's most   valuable companies but it's not one of the  world's biggest companies uh you know we are   50 times smaller than Amazon for example,  50 times. You know we're at least   15 or 20 times smaller than Microsoft in terms  of just the sheer number of employees, right,   number of offices we have about 22 000 employees  which in the span of things is just not very much   I mean, you mentioned EY. I used to be a partner  at two weights and EY and each of those firms are   high quality firms and they have in excess of  300 000 employees you know so 10 to 15 times   more than NVIDIA. So, our impact on the world our  value in the marketplace is not tied to the size   of our company, it's tied to the to the velocity  and scale of the innovation that we create and I   think the same thing is true of Australia and the  UAE, I think that is actually a very common trait   and when it comes to artificial intelligence which  is not one thing, right? AI is a constellation of   technologies it's a suite of capabilities it  includes both human and compute ecosystems,   right? there's a lot going on there but again  the UAE and Australia have both very ambitious   and really, very thoughtful and how they've gone  about building those things as Talal mentioned   you know group 42 is this incredible company that  most people haven't heard of and yet I will say   with unscientific evidence but just based on my  expert opinion that there's probably Group 42   probably has a more advanced infrastructure and  a larger sort of human you know data science team   in all in its overall raw AI capacity. It probably  exceeds the vast majority of fortune 500 companies   in the world you know hands down and as I'm sure  you know the truth is most people have never   heard of them and yet they are a powerhouse  right and not just because they have really   awesome inviting technology in their data center  that's a part of it but that's not the only reason   and so we're, so I think we're at this  interesting time you know to see all that and   one of the things that I focus on and it's  part of my job and it's also more of a passion   is really the, I'll say, the democratization of  AI but that sounds a little, I feel it feels a   little overused so I want to actually be very  specific it's really about the inclusivity of AI   on a global scale across nations I mean  what most people don't fully appreciate   is that there are only of the 193 nations in in  the UN, only 31 have a top 500 supercomputer. That   is one of one of the top 500 biggest computers  in the world but for most of the last you know   30 years that didn't really matter I mean those  computers had very specific and narrow purposes,   used for scientific computing and high  performance sort of simulations related to   some very narrowly scoped fields and not having  one, it was not really critical to your economy   to your future to your prosperity to your national  security per se, that's no longer true, right? The   stack of technology that that drives science the  stack of technology behind super-computing and the   capabilities, the infrastructure and the intel the  expertise that same stack of capability is now one   of the engines for economic growth it's one of the  was one of the turning points for both prosperity   and security and it's actually quite important and  the fact that 160 nations in the world do not have   one, actually speaks to the growing disparity  between the global north and the global south   between other things and I know the UAE and Group  42 directly have been involved in some of those   issues and frankly helping address that in Africa,  for example, and also played a key role in using   its technology during the covert crisis and then,  you know helped, you know bring a lot of benefits   to people who weren't you know to me immediately  in their domain and but in the really in the next   you know the next 10 years, Australia in the  Asia-Pacific region and G42 and UAE in this   region will actually have an opportunity to play  even greater role as that divide that compute   divide will actually lead to and throttle the  economic progress of nations that do not have   either the capability it's going to play a bigger  role. I recently joined President Biden's National  

AI Advisory Committee and this was a major  topic of the inclusivity of AI and access to   not just you know not just the computing but to  the knowledge the education to the benefits to   the shared sort of distribution of value from that  technology that's not going to happen by itself so   and one of the five working groups of that  committee is actually in International   Cooperation and I serve right and that's because  it's so important for nations to get together,   for nations with shared values  a shared vision to collaborate   and so I recognize and I praise the government  of the UAE and Australia for creating this bond   between you and for collaborating and of course  the privilege for NVIDIA to collaborate and be   a part of that in our own way and very excited  for that sure so thank you again for inviting   me here today until it was wonderful to  see you and I will hand it back to you. Thank you Keith and we look forward to hearing  more from you. Look this is obviously a very   vast and complex topic with many areas of  consideration that have been touched on in your   opening remarks. I think just picking up on the  thing that you just touched on Keith in terms of  

the fortune 500 companies and obvious complement  to G42 and which is unsurprising that it's really   harnessed and grasped AI so much given the  UAE has had such focus and made this area   a priority of strategic interest but looking at  private companies and the corporate perspective   what is I guess the greatest barriers to AI  adoption from private companies and combining   this question with a question that's actually  coming from Jack de Hennin from GC Advisory,   what abilities need to be put in place, what  critical abilities need to be put in place   for an organization to fully harness  AI in the private and corporate space.   Yeah, it's that's a really big question, hard  to answer quickly but here's the thing. I think   one of the one of the mistakes that I that  I’ve observed over the last few years is that   people think about AI like it's I.T. and this is  a big challenge. I think the first capability you  

need is to recognize that artificial intelligence  is not the same as information technology.   You know it is technology and it involves  technology but actually AI is different. AI is not   implemented as much as it's applied right there's  a strong iterative scientific component to it I   mean that is changing there are parts of the AI  spectrum that are becoming more industrialized and   a little stronger and you can consume versions of  AI through third parties that are essentially like   tools you would implement but true competitiveness  comes from applying AI to solve really complex   problems and that is not easily done. That  requires a level of patience and acceptance  

some failure and also as well as understanding  of the risks and limitations of AI which is   very important so that you build in you know the  governance and the safeguards on the front and   the back end and those are just not capabilities  that most organizations have right now in the same   IT department the same CIO, the same data center  all those things and I'll give you just a really,   I won't name the company respectfully but just  you know a recent example where a very large   company purchased a very small computer for us and  just a couple of servers frankly, so not nothing   like what G42 has and but this is a very large  company 30 billion dollar company and they had   us ship these servers to their data center and  then they got this very panicky call from the   data center. The person that runs the data center  and he's like what do you want me to do with these   I'm like what do you mean, I said we have you  know we're like a toyota dealer and you just drop   lamborghini you know on our front on our backyard  we have no idea what to do with a lamborghini   you know. I mean and that's because most people  just think technology's owed technology but that's   not true when you're when you move into this  world of very high-end high-performance computing   and you are dealing with a level of hardware  sophistication, software sophistication,   the network infrastructure, the entire  operation end-to-end is completely unfamiliar to   99.9 of those that work in data centers, IT  departments it's a completely adjacent world  

it may look the same but it's not and it  requires completely different kinds of expertise   and so you just have, I think, the most important  skills to understand that just understand that   you're moving into a new phase this coexists and  sits on top of traditional computing it's right it   obviously has things similar in common but it is  a new direction and there's a high failure rate.   I mean there's a very high failure rate for  those that do not acknowledge the distinction   and again as I mentioned earlier the risks,  the governance needs so all in all, I think   the number one skill is the leadership to sort of  humility to acknowledge you're going in the right   direction you're going a different direction  and to give the support and the sponsorship   to those in that effort including your partners  external lenders. To understand this is not like   implementing an ERP system this is a completely  new chapter so I would just sort of end on that.   No dan is shaking his head, so we're in agreement.  Daniel did you have anything to add to that?  Oh look, I couldn't agree more with what  Keith had to say. I think probably the other   thing that we see on a really practical from a  really practical perspective is the need to get   your data in order and understand your data and  understand sort of traditional data management   and real sort of basics it really exposes the  fact that if you don't have your data in order   it's very difficult to lead an organization  and to leverage that data in different ways.  

If you don't have the fundamentals of data  management right, I think that's another sort   of when you talk about sort of those foundational  capabilities that need to be in place. In addition   to what Keith mentioned that just the fundamentals  of good management of data is a key enabling   capability that organizations need to start to  embrace if they're to get on board the wagon. Yeah and Talal, did you have  anything to add to that? Well I think it was well covered by both Keith and  Daniel. I mean if I was to say one other thing is   you know it's important for people to actually  rather than just listen and hear the buzzwords.   AI and everything else and it's important to  see the magic that is AI or what it produces   and once they see that, call it whatever you  want but you know when you were a kid and you   saw a magic trick and you thought it was actually  really magic you don't necessarily need to know   what's happening behind the scenes but that data  driven decision making that predictive analytics   with high compute can provide and certain  domains are relevant to the person that is   on the fence and maybe hesitant to embrace AI  thinking it's a lot more than it really is.   I think that is a very powerful thing and I'm  wowed by it on a daily basis by some of the stuff   our team puts together in enterprise solutions  with big data as Daniel mentioned and you know   you know like having the Rolls Royce in your  data center versus the Honda and your data center   these are you know you can you can use those as  data points and say yes we have the best and we   have but at the end of the day it's all about the  solutions that we're trying to drive towards so   when I mentioned computer vision-based borehole  analysis, you show them the bottom line in terms   of numbers and the decisions and the lessened  amount of geologists that you would need to   solve something that would have otherwise  taken weeks in two hours because of the compute   and that's like you know brute force  compute happening in the background   you know going through multiple images and then  coming out with something with you know either   change detection but then you have predictive  analytics in terms of what may happen based on   data ingestion and that is really like magic and  I think the more people that actually see this,   the more they will appreciate, number one, that  it's achievable and they can apply it to some   of the pain points that they may have and number  two, the more they'll understand it and not fear   it per se because of sometimes the dystopic view  that people in Hollywood kind of attach to AI   in many cases. I’m not saying it shouldn't be  something we look at, I think with the narrow  

intelligence we have today now super intelligence  on a narrow basis we don't have much to fear but   once it's more generalized then there will need  to be ethical considerations in place for how you   regulate that on a government level either you  know in a single country or multilaterally even   absolutely and we'll touch on that in in a  little while in terms of so, I hear you if   you've got your data organized as a corporate as  a fortune 500 company that's a good place to start   it's understandable that a lot of corporates that  operate outside of the research and development   sphere don't have the risk appetite  they don't have the you know investor   sort of bandwidths to fail and they certainly  don't have governance bandwidth to fail   in sort of exploring these areas and I don't  know if there is an answer to this question but   what sectors or areas within the private space  do you see have developed AI capabilities that   are corporate in sort of either the health  space or the financial services space   or the defense space or in mining, for example,  Cannon should be aware of at this point that   has been de-risked to a level where they  could start exploring it as a company. Do you want me to respond? So it's interesting, so  we signed a partnership recently a few months ago   with Australia's National Science Research Agency  CSIRO and I remember in working on that agreement   before we put it together you know part of one of  the key parts was to identify sort of the areas   of focus and we had a lot of trouble picking,  narrowing, the areas of focus because there   was so much opportunity and every time we would  shorten the list someone would add something back   and this kind of goes to your question which  is you know they're, I mean, AI is this piece   of general-purpose technology that is reshaping  every industry right so it's uh we could we it   was hard to pick I mean certainly you mentioned  mining certainly there are specific industries   obviously in Australia that have actually been out  in front of this topic, I mean the mining sector   in Australia has really been one of the leading  developers and implementers. Early doctors of   autonomous systems, the largest robot in the world  is a train in Australia right. You know, I believe   and you know those mines are completely autonomous  at this point like at group South 32 and others   were you know hundreds of miles away you know  they're monitoring a mine it's basically run   by robots and so this has become that you know. So  absolutely now across the world you won't see that   as much but there isn't a sector of the Australian  economy or that that isn't affected and in the   UAE what was really fascinating about the UV in  from the beginning because of the strategy was so   comprehensive that every agency in the government  you know from the roads authority to everybody you   know had to have, to have a really well-developed  AI strategy and that was just a requirement and   that had to be tied to national benchmarks and  other things so it was really quite, you know,   it was quite aggressive and so again I think  that this, it's hard to pick an industry that   is not affected some industries are out front  clearly you know than others and I think you   know it tends to be the tech sector first you know  kind of led, you know, led the industry and then   from the tech sector it's kind of come down to  these other industries I would say healthcare is   not a leading industry it's just one of the more  important industries by all means it's one of the   best examples of where AI is going to create a lot  of value for the world but it's not ahead by any   stretch you know there's still a lot of work to be  done. I think the industrial sectors manufacturing   cars auto that, you know, that feel use you know,  I think they're very aggressive adopters but you   know as you mentioned financial services is huge I  mean particularly in fraud detection and customer   service. There's a significant adoption of AI and  automation in general in that sector so you can't  

really pick one it's hard to say who's out ahead  but certainly within certain countries like mining   in Australia you will see leaders in those fields  so let me hand it back to the other panellists. I might jump in there if you don't mind we  just got some yeah well look I agree 100%   Keith. I think it's not necessarily about the  sector but almost like the use case if you like   within the sector and the transportability  of that use case across different sectors   and so as I mentioned at the beginning, I think  something like object detection as an example   can be utilized you know the primary use case  that we see in Australia is around law enforcement   and national security however that same  application of that use case can be applied to   facilities management service delivery various  different other contexts with a really positive   return on investment so where I think the, you  know, that one of the benefits of bringing a   group like this together for a discussion  and obviously to further this work is to   really draw out those stories and create the  art of what's possible that is applicable across   different sectors but with tangible metrics that  start to demystify that journey of getting to it   to an AI enabled world, you know I think people – yeah do you point Keith around ERPS I think every   uh you know person who's done an it project is has  got some sort of scars from a failed IT delivery   project that's taken three years and returned half  of its benefits that it had promised and I think   the introduction of AI is completely different  but people put it in the same put it in the same   sort of category I think we can incrementally  deliver value with AI and we can start small   and grow with very little investment and we  need to demystify that sort of approach to the   introduction of these technologies to help people  embrace and sort of start to play a little bit   more with the art of what's possible and I think  at the moment everyone's still in that stage where   they still think the AI is is that movie from  Hollywood and it's going to change the world   and somehow take away your control  and your ownership of your own being. Yeah, just while we're on you Daniel, if I  may just interject for a second, you mentioned   one of the four themes in your opening remarks  currently as being the delivery of digital twins   you did refer to one example, but I just  wondered if you could elaborate a bit more on   what is a digital twin and like give some more  practical examples of how that might apply   in in maybe some other sectors as well Just yeah so certainly yeah look at look   the case I'll be quite specific with this case, so  we have an emerging you know green energy storage   company that's got quite an innovative value  proposition of reusing abandoned mine shafts and   turning them into energy storage and distribution  and so what we're doing is working with this   company on the establishment of a digital twin  which is a digital representation of the physical,   you know physical environment and so that's  really the use of that is it's done through   modeling through geographically accurate  modeling and it'll throw through the scent   through sensors through video and through  feedback mechanisms that allow you to create   almost the digital model of the of that physical  world and so what we're doing that for the value   proposition for that organization is to really  look at optimizing their operations reducing   downtime you know preventative maintenance but  also about optimizing the system as a whole   and its interaction with the energy grid  so looking at global optimization of assets   and using analytical models to drive when you  do and don't release power into the networks   and so you know another I think you might  have mentioned that, Ellie, at the beginning   or maybe it was before the webinar started the  concept of autonomous vehicles having their own   virtual world to run their training in to train  the model that will work in a physical world   negates the need to simulate tests in a physical  world and so that's sort of the concept of moving   trial and error into a virtual world to do  predictive work that actually can optimize   the way you deliver things is a really exciting  part of the use of AI so we see that uh you   know very so if that's one use case to that  we're working through we see it being used   in facilities management so traditional ways in a  very simple example is you might have a contract   for somebody to mow the lawns out the front of  the building or to cut the hedges and maybe that   contract happens once a month but why don't  we cut the lawns when the lawns need to be cut   so such a simple example of how you  could use intelligence and through   you know a representation of real world to drive  intelligent decisions around optimizing a system.  Fantastic, thanks Daniel. Talal from the Muhammad  bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence  

to the UAE Ministry of Artificial Intelligence  the UAE is obviously investing heavily in in   this space and not many countries have Ministers  for Artificial Intelligence but the UAE does.   What opportunities do you see for the Australia  and Emirati businesses to collaborate on   looking forward and with the things that you're  learning as an organization but also that you're   aware of from the country perspective. Yeah it's a good question I think   there are quite a bit I don't know, if I was to  pinpoint one I would look at how do we leverage   one another strengths and different domains with  industries and applications and then try to figure   out how a company like ours or similar companies  to us can partner with Australian companies   be it here in the UAE or in Australia to  unlock the full potential of those use cases   but like you said I think you know the environment  that the UAE government has created that allows   us to operate and as he put a punch above our  weight is really something we're blessed with and   it is a testament to the vision of the leadership  in really helping move the needle on AI not just   locally but on a global level and so from my  perspective I think what I've seen in Australia   again similar industries in energy the mining one  specifically is something that's quite conducive   to having autonomous operations and robotics  which obviously the underlying technology   thereof would be artificial intelligence to kind  of help enhance those mechanisms I think there   are ways that we would be able to build on what  Australia has done very well in those areas and   then apply them to use cases over here that are  quite unique to our environment and again to the   point Daniel made about transferability that's  the type of thing that we look for in fact I   remember when I was in the space industry the one  thing that I was extremely excited about you know   in tying up was how do we figure out how to take  what Australia has built in the mining industry   with autonomous operations and robotics to space  even and do that on the moon or on mars so there   are so many different things that we could look  at collaborating on but you know I think the most   of hanging fruits would be in the healthcare  space the energy space or whatever it might be   looking at the common denominator and some of  those technologies the ai-based technologies   the ones Daniel mentioned computer vision NLP and  in our case we have you know a much more advanced   Arabic language model than other countries in  the world so you could look at applying what   you've learned and applied NLP to in Australia  to the Arabic world that has 400 million Arabic   speakers so it's not just AUE centric but from  the UAE you serve that using and leveraging the   you know infrastructure we have and the support we  have from a partner a common partner like NVIDIA   and finding those synergies that we  could then unlock value together with.

Great thanks Talal now we have two  questions. Christopher Pyne I think is   we'd like to ask good questions  so sir would you like to go ahead. Thanks Ellie and thank you very much for  moderating this webinar event this afternoon   and thank you to Daniel and Keith and Talal for  joining us it's a very important subject it's   a very much an insider's outsiders subject and  listening to the conversation that only reinforces   that point the people inside the tent know what  everyone's talking about and people outside the   tent feel completely divorced from it and for me  as a former politician and minister you know the   one of the biggest challenges I think to AI and  its take up uh is the ignorance of legislators,   regulators and Ministers about what AI is  all about and its uses and its impact on   the economy especially over the long term which is  obviously going to be immense so does the industry   have any kind of strategy that they have that  they are collaborating on or thinking about   to take the debate about AI its uses and  its ethics to regulators and legislators who   could actually be the biggest problem  in AI reaching its full potential.  Yeah Chris I feel like you know my pain and  so I feel like it really kind of really got   right in there a couple of things on that topic so  that's a really great question first off. Yeah so  

with all with all due respect you know ai is a  complicated topic right and so I think it's not   that hard to understand why a lot of people don't  understand it and to some extent there's also a   lot of this misinformation but as I go around the  world and I have the privilege of being sort of   the primary interface to foreign government so  I have meetings and conversations every single   week with governments across the world and  so I have a pretty healthy view on this topic   for the most part 99 of those that I meet do  not understand what AI is or worse they have   the wrong understanding and you know dangerously  wrong but also you know even going below that   they may understand you know there's kind of  these three pillars AI there's sort of data   there's the algorithms and those that create the  algorithms the you know the data scientists and   then there's the infrastructure the computing and  to some degree I'd say there's a fair amount of   there's some understanding it's not always  correct but there's some understanding   and there's a lot of policy focus on data and  issues related to data and there's some focus   and policies around algorithms there's far  less understanding on the infrastructure side   and it's actually such a blind spot globally  that the OECD has set up a dedicated task force   called the AI compute and climate task  force whose primary mission is to develop a   easy to understand non-technical framework for  helping government leaders sort of get hands   around you know how much AI capacity do they  have and is it enough for their country and   I’m the co-chair of that that task force and Angus  Makustra from Cyro is also on the task force and   so this is a this is a widespread problem you know  worldwide and as you said sometimes the problem   but it is what it is I mean so I think part of  the obligation to it from an industry perspective   is to have these conversations right to have to  engage and to educate so it's not so much to sell   or to market but to educate and I know I spend  a considerable amount of my time doing just that   I know other I know other big tech firms also do  that as well and have a lot of engagement on these   topics but it is it is a blind spot and it does  lead to calculations from a policy perspective and   I would say because you mentioned economics  and you mentioned ethics and what I would   say is actually if there is a bright spot  I would say there's certainly a lot more   focused and understanding on the potential risks  today than ever before on AI and there's a lot of   both domestic and international bodies you  know focused on that topic and so forth,   you know and shared principles right from the  OECD’s shared principles on that topic and the   EU’s leadership around trustworthy AI and so  forth so I feel like there is progress there what   I think is coming up behind it maybe a little bit  earlier is just the understanding that artificial   intelligence is going to be and is going to  be one of the key drivers of economic growth   and across all industries and that failure to  invest in the skills the human you know component   as well as the infrastructure and the ecosystems  will directly affect prosperity over time and   the opportunity for countries to participate  and what you know you can think of as sort of   the dividend from AI which all the firms have  a number you know PwC, McKinsey everyone's come   up with a number but let's just you know it's  in excess of somewhere in the 10 to 15 trillion   you know range but you know that won't be evenly  distributed right not every country will get that   you know will get its equal share you have to go  after it and I think that is that is definitely   where you know more education has to be sort of  focused on so anyway so I think it's a great point   everyone struggles with that issue but there are  some bright spots but I know that I'm doing my   part and I'm sure others are as well I mean Daniel Yeah I agree, I agree with you Keith.  Daniel if I may, you know one thing I would  mention you know sometimes we look at ethical   AI and ethics in AI in a very one-dimensional  fashion and then we see it from again trying to   demystify it to help people avoid thinking of  AI as something that could be that could lead   to a dystopic future and the terminator scenario  and all these other uh you know crazy things but   I think the immediate that we're seeing more and  I think Keith you touched on it in terms of data   privacy and what Europe has done is ensuring  that while we are creating the infrastructure   of enablement for AI which in our case or I  think even in Daniel's case we are building   we're more like the utility and then there is  not really a regulator in place in many different   countries or on a multilateral level to show you  what the right approach to using AI would be or   what would be ethical and what would not and  it's very hard to come to a common denominator   on anything these days even at the UN so you know  AI is actually going to be a lot more subjective   but when you think of data privacy that is an  important thing and that is something that we   could immediately address and while we enable  technological digital transformation with the   compute and with the muscle power that many  companies can bring to the table or with the   brain power on the analytics side what we  what we need to do is also enable digital   sovereignty I think that is going to be something  that's increasingly important across the world   especially for countries that are leapfrogging  the traditional way of building the capability to   get to that point so you know a country in Africa  would be a recipient of technologies from multiple   different countries not every one of them have  the same shirt set of values right and so their   influence will be a product of the technology  provider what we have done successfully in the   UAE and it's not like we strove out to do that  what we did was a consequence of the demand and an   economic forcing function that the government had  we need to build and operate own and operate our   own digitally sovereign cloud in the UAE and based  on that model that we kind of stumbled upon five   years ago we now have first movers advantage in an  area where other you know big cloud providers are   trying to play and so what we have in that model  that's been successful in the UAE where you're   looking to emulate in other countries on a smaller  scale so that they can get a taste of digital   transformation without feeling the hesitation or  worry that there would be privacy issues or that   their clouds and their in digital infrastructure  would be subject to foreign jurisdictions or   the potential of there to be an off switch to that  uh system and so I think to a point Keith made   earlier about democratizing I think rather than  it be looked at as only democratizing ai it's one   where you're giving every country and every entity  that is a recipient of this technology the ability   to independently operate it in a way that allows  for as much digital sovereignty as possible.  That's a great point Ellie, I might just add one  last point to that one if I can quickly I look up   I think through this whole conversation we've all  seen the enormity of the problem that we've got in   front of us but I can't help but think that what  we've all got to do is just take one step forward   and everyone takes one step forward we will  eventually get there and I think you know when we   think about general AI and sort of rather than the  narrow use cases you can almost get lost in the   forest without seeing the trees and so I know that  it exemplified we try and simplify we try and what   take one step some of our enabling capabilities  which is similar to what G42 have got around a   sovereign high performance compute based on NVIDIA  really bring down the barriers to entry that   allows somebody to take that first step understand  grow solve some of these issues and move forward   because if you almost step back and try and  solve all these issues before you move forward   I think we'll never get anywhere so  just wanted to add that last piece in. Fabulous, thank you. So just one last question  that I had for us to wrap up really and it  

ideally is a big question but if you could keep  it brief that would be good so the year is 2035   and what is one thing that that  we have and or are experiencing   that we aren't today that you that you  predict or expect us to have in our world then   can I jump in with a one-liner that is a  community that is embracing innovation using ai. I would say we're experiencing less  gravity because we're on mars by then. How do you confirm how do you beat mars oh boy oh  that's really look, I, you mentioned digital twins   what I would just earlier I would just circle back  to that say actually I believe that the ability to   simulate not just a metaverse but millions  upon millions of virtual worlds for different   purposes will become a strategic capability  for nations and for companies and just and to   a large extent the ability to simulate a virtual  world becomes a tool almost for time travel and   the ability to both look in the past and predict  the future for anything whether it's for business   or policy purposes and I think this will be a  fundamental change in how we approach things   the question the question becomes do the people in  the simulation know that they're in a simulation. That's a whole other issue  that's a whole bunch of webinars. Great so we've got greater understanding  the embracing of this and collaboration   we're on mars some of us and we're if we're not on  mars we're in we're in one of several metaverses   simulating life with the hope of  actually doing it in in real life.

Fantastic thank you so much gentlemen. What a  what a stimulating conversation and I think that   Christopher made a very very good point in that  it is an insider's outsiders topic and thank you   very much for explaining just a small small part  of this to us generalists or our outsiders today   and for expanding a little bit for those insiders  who have joined us. Just a just a reminder to   everybody on the webinar if you'd like to be  involved in the working group that the council   is launching today please reach out and  she'll add you to that to that working group   and if no one else has any further comments I'd  just like to say thank you a special thanks to   our co-chairs His Excellency Baralalama and the  Honourable Christopher Pyne and a big thank you   to the AUS-UAE Business Council Team, especially  Tamika for putting this webinar together   and Kacey as well for supporting on this topic  we look forward to seeing what the working group   comes up with and discussing  this further in the future. Thank you thank you very much ellie okay  thank you thank you all very much thank you

2022-05-31

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