SPEECH: Remarks by Ahmad O. Al-Khowaiter at the Global AI Summit 2024

Remarks by Ahmad O. Al-Khowaiter, Executive Vice President of Technology and Innovation

Your Highnesses, Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, it gives me great pleasure and is a great honor to speak to you today in this great event.

I want to begin by thanking HRH, the Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, not only for his patronage of this event, but also for his farsighted vision to elevate the Kingdom to become a world leader in artificial intelligence.

I also want to thank the Saudi Data and AI Authority for hosting us here in Riyadh and organizing another amazing event. We are excited about AI’s potential to transform both the Kingdom’s economy and society, it will enhance and transform our talent and will create greater value for our resources.

Some of the world’s biggest technology companies have arrived while others are expanding their already incredible presence in these events. This is the right time for us to meet and discover what’s next in this rapidly developing field.

But, not only is this the right time, I believe it also the right place. Many centuries ago, not too far from here in Baghdad, the great mathematician Al Khawarizmi introduced the world to algebra and of course “algorithms”, the basic building block of computation.

Fast forward 1,000 years and Alan Turing introduces his theory of computation and applies complex algorithms on machines for the first time. Soon after, scientists began experimenting with how human thinking could inspire machine learning by mimicking neurons in our own brains, and the first artificial neural networks were born as the field of Artificial Intelligence began to emerge.

Today, with the huge advances in computing power that we have seen, artificial neural networks are at the heart of Large Language Models, not only predicting data, but generating new, complex data.

So, earlier this year at LEAP we launched Aramco MetaBrain, the first industrial Large Language Model. We trained it on decades of proprietary Aramco data. We believe it will significantly boost our productivity, transforming the way we work.

As the largest energy companies in the world, we are harnessing the possibilities of Generative AI at an unprecedented scale. By investing heavily in this area, we believe we can test and deploy new technologies on an industrial level, changing the way energy and other sectors operate forever.

For example, Aramco’s AI models are already analyzing drilling plans and geological data to recommend the best well options for our engineers. And soon we will be providing forecasts for pricing trends and market dynamics for the refined products we sell around the world.

And I’m delighted to announce that this week we are going live with our latest NVIDIA SuperPod Cluster, taking Aramco MetaBrain to the next level. This will put 90 years of expert knowledge at the fingertips of our operators, our technicians and our engineers. It will be their co-pilot, changing the industrial workplace to improve productivity, sustainability and safety.

And working at an industrial scale means technologies at every level can add significant value to our operations. That is why Aramco Digital is announcing that they’re working with Groq, to quickly scale our AI inference capacity. So not only are we building the models, but we are building our capacity to serve those models with the greatest performance possible.

In time, we plan to avail this technology to a multi-billion-dollar market across the world, because most users will be running models, not just training them.

Another example, is building the infrastructure for AI on the edge, we have been exploring this with Qualcomm, introducing ever more capable tools for areas like maintenance and safety.

The rollout of industrial scale AI will inevitably come with new cybersecurity risks, especially because of the sensitivity of the data it uses.

To help counter this threat, we have launched the ‘Eye on AI’ program to secure these transformative technologies. The program will help identify vulnerabilities, establish robust governance and upskill our workforce.

We hope by sharing what we know with others, we can play our part in securing the future of AI for all. And that includes securing energy needs too.

Luckily this is something we know a thing or two about. AI applications requires roughly ten times the power compared to traditional digital applications. And data centers will, by some estimates, see their power demand double or triple by the end of the decade, and that’s a conservative estimate.

So, today the internet accounts for 2 to 3%, roughly, of global energy demand. Imagine if that becomes 6 to 7%, or higher. Aramco can help meet this increased demand with lower cost and lower carbon solutions, in particular thanks to innovations in carbon capture, hydrogen production, renewable energy and large-scale energy storage.

This means adopting industrial scale AI doesn’t have to compromise sustainability goals. In fact, Aramco is using AI to help forecast energy demand and its associated, helping improve our performance while reducing our emissions.

Ladies and gentlemen, to conclude, I am confident that Aramco’s investment in the AI technologies will completely transform the way we operate. We can gain advantage across our businesses both here and abroad, all the way from China to Chile.

Through the partnerships we build, the problems we solve together and the power we supply, Aramco can help the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia become not only an energy leader, but an AI leader too.

Thank you.