NEW SCHEDULE! (9-13 GMT+2)
The MENA AI landscape appears to be vibrant, with many entities catalyzing smart technologies for digital transformation.
Yet scarce amount of sources exist on what constitutes the AI MENA landscape. There have been efforts to bring together the pan-Arab AI community in conferences such as the Arab AI Summit hosted in Jordan in 2019, the Arab IOT and AI Challenge in Egypt. But details about key players and entities, policies and research, that revolve around AI are sparsely documented. In order to fully exploit the potential of existing capacities and understand gaps in practices, it is essential to map this ecosystem.
We aim in this discussion to present research whereby we conducted an initial mapping of AI entities in the MENA.
This is a project sprint from the "AI IRL Hackathon - Building Trustworthy AI". Registration and more information here: http://mzl.la/taihackathon
Regardless of the number of attendees, the session will be organised so as to have 15-20 minutes of presentation, 10-15 minutes for questions and answers, and then 30 minutes for the activity. If we receive 30 participants, we will breakout in smaller groups. If we have 3 attendees, we can run the activity together.
We're hoping that many efforts and discussions will continue after Mozfest. Share any ideas you already have for how to continue the work from your session.:We aim for the session to be a starting point for a crowdsourced mapping of AI ecosystems in the MENA. We will be launching a website which will visualise and list all entities found in the research. We hope to build a small community around the project and allow for users to contribute entities and feedback (e.g. identifying a new CSO working on AI ethics in the MENA).
We hope to also inspire future research that is more granular in its mapping. We believe that such a mapping exercise should pinpoint the specific field of AI in question for each individual entity. A finding in this case would be that there are more companies working on Arabic natural language processing whereas the majority of research centres tend to focus on computer vision.
What is the goal and/or outcome of your session?:The goal of this session is to present the results of a mapping research which aimed to understand who does what in AI in the MENA. We mapped: research and educational organisations, governmental entities, civil society organisations, and industry players including funders. This mapping studied 17 countries from the MENA region.
The session will include an activity in which attendees can provide feedback on the research methodology, and brainstorm how best to move forward with the mapping. We also hope, through the session, to kickstart a crowdsourced initiative to sustain the mapping of AI entities in the region, and expand to the rest of the countries in the region.
Program coordinator at the Jordan Open Source Association. Background in Human-Computer Interaction. I sometimes contribute to Wikipedia. I have an inkling for photojournalism.
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