Tortoise Intelligence recently released the Artificial Intelligence Index Report for the year 2023, which is one of the global rankings of artificial intelligence that includes more than 60 countries. In this article, we will review the main topics that this report focuses on and the ranking of Arab countries according to its findings.

The Artificial Intelligence Index (AI)

AI index relies on 111 indicators collected from 28 different sources of public and private data, covering 62 countries. These indicators are categorized within seven core pillars, which are as follows:

1. Government Strategy: This indicator measures the depth of governmental commitment to national artificial intelligence strategies and the extent of their commitment in terms of expenditure and implementation.
2. Research: This measure encompasses specialized research output in artificial intelligence, including the number of publications and citations in reputable academic journals.
3. Development: This pillar focuses on the level of development of foundational platforms and algorithms relied upon by innovative artificial intelligence projects.
4. Competence (Talent): This measure emphasizes the availability of talents and skills among practitioners engaged in artificial intelligence solutions.
5. Infrastructure: This pillar evaluates the availability of infrastructure related to artificial intelligence activities, including electricity, internet access, automation, and more.
6. Operational Environment: This measure focuses on the regulatory context and public perception of artificial intelligence.
7. Trade: This measure concentrates on business activities, including the activities of startups, investments, and artificial intelligence-based commercial initiatives.

These pillars provide a comprehensive framework for assessing the position of countries in the field of artificial intelligence.

Ranking of Arab countries on the Artificial Intelligence Index

The United States of America ranked first on the Artificial Intelligence Index, followed by China in second place, and then Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Canada. As for the Arab countries, the table below illustrates their ranking on both the global and Arab levels.

As can be seen, with the exception of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which secured average global rankings, other Arab countries rank lower on the global scale. It is worth noting from the table that there is a common weakness among all Arab countries included in the index, which is the talent pool working in artificial intelligence activities. If we consider the average ranking of Arab countries in this index, their combined position is approximately 48, indicating an educational and professional gap in the Arab world in this field. Additionally, significant lag can be observed for Arab countries in terms of operational environment, development and trade indicators.

On the other hand, there is significant variation among Arab countries in terms of operational environment, government strategy, and research indicators. In terms of government strategy, Saudi Arabia not only outperforms on the Arab level but also takes the global lead. This is attributed to the presence of a dedicated and approved national strategy for artificial intelligence, a government entity specifically focused on developing implementation plans for artificial intelligence in the country, providing funding and a dedicated budget, and monitoring the achievement of set goals. Since 2018, the Kingdom has shown interest in the field of artificial intelligence by establishing the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority "SDAIA" as the national reference for the development, regulation, and utilization of artificial intelligence.

Likewise, the United Arab Emirates holds a relatively advanced position (rank 20) in terms of having a national strategy for artificial intelligence and its commitment to implementation. However, the most notable strength of the UAE in this field lies in its infrastructure, where it ranks fourth globally. Qatar also stands out in terms of research indicators, securing a relatively advanced position (rank 17), with a 17-place difference from the UAE on the same index.

For more information about the Artificial Intelligence Index Report, please visit the Tortoise Intelligence website by clicking here.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming an increasingly powerful tool for businesses, and AI has been referred to as "the next big thing" in the business world in recent years. But today, talk about artificial intelligence is no longer about future speculation, but rather a tangible reality, and the stories that filled the news about ChatGPT are only evidence of that. It is also no longer limited to large companies such as self-driving cars, but startups and small companies can benefit from it as well. So we have an opportunity to benefit from the developments of artificial intelligence in the business world, but how?

This article we review four ways in which small businesses can leverage AI to boost their growth and gain a competitive advantage:

1- Enhancing customer service: While customer service often requires a human touch, AI can make it more efficient. AI's efficiency is evident in its ability to serve as an initial point of contact for responding to customer inquiries. Thanks to AI advancements, conversational robots have become more effective in written and spoken communication, even in different languages. They can efficiently handle customer queries and provide personalized experiences by understanding and responding to customer needs.

The benefits of using AI in customer service extend beyond cost reduction. AI can collect and reuse customer information, offering clear insights into customer requirements and desires. It can use data for predictions, identify areas of improvement, and even indicate potential expansions or advanced services, ensuring customer satisfaction.

Some popular AI tools that can enhance customer service: (ChatGPT, IBM Watson Assistant, LivePerson, Ada, Salesforce Einstein, Bold360, Nuance Nina, Zendesk Answer Bot).

2- Improving email interactions: Dealing with a large volume of customer emails, tracking requests, responding to inquiries, and managing other tasks can lead to chaos even in well-organized teams. Slow and inadequate responses to customer queries can frustrate customers and create a negative perception of a company's brand.

Email robots offer various solutions to overcome the challenges associated with managing email correspondence. They automate comprehensive response services, including addressing pricing inquiries, product quality, delivery services, order updates, and more. They can also escalate more complex messages to the appropriate department within the company. With advancements in robotics, the tone and language can be tailored to enhance communication with customers. This saves time in addressing repetitive customer queries that can be resolved through automated responses.

Some popular AI tools that can help improve email interactions: Grammarly, Crystal, Boomerang, PoliteMail, Respondable by Boomerang (AI-powered tool integrated with popular email platforms like Gmail), Clearbit Connect, X.a.

3- Marketing and sales: AI has numerous applications in the field of marketing. The main advantage of using AI in marketing is that decision-making and communication processes are based on accurate and comprehensive data. AI applications provide a more holistic and accurate view of sales, helping create customer prospect lists and identify strengths and weaknesses before planning marketing campaigns. One survey found that 61% of sales teams exceeded revenue targets by leveraging automation in their sales processes. AI can also be employed to analyze sales data and marketing performance, facilitating better decision-making.

Some popular AI tools that can be useful for marketing and sales: Salesforce Einstein, Marketo Engage, HubSpot Sales Hub, Drift, InsideSales Predictive Playbooks, Gong.io, Conversica, IBM Watson Marketing.

4- Blog writing and search engine optimization (SEO): AI helps increase the quantity and quality of blog content by significantly reducing writing and editing time. It does so by inputting and analyzing keywords, determining their appropriate usage and distribution, and formulating or restructuring sentences and paragraphs related to the keywords. AI simplifies content writing and blog optimization, saving time and effort, reducing errors, and enhancing content quality. In fact, one study indicated that the use of AI by marketers increased from 29% in 2018 to 84% in 2020.

Some popular AI tools that can be useful for blog writing and search engine optimization (SEO): Frase, SEMrush, Surfer SEO, Clearscope, WordLift, MarketMuse, Yoast SEO, TextOptimizer.

Determining the best AI tool to use depends on several factors and considerations, such as: your needs, ease of use, compatibility of the tool with your existing systems, software, or platforms, scalability, pricing of the tool, flexibility and customization within other factures. It is recommended to thoroughly evaluate different AI tools based on the user's specific context and requirements before making a decision.

By leveraging AI in several areas, startups can gain a competitive advantage by streamlining operations, improving customer experiences, and making data-driven decisions. By embracing AI, small businesses can unlock new opportunities for growth and remain competitive in an increasingly data-centric digital business environment.

(العربية)

Mohamed Shaker is a Syrian entrepreneur, born in Damascus in 1990. Mohamed has shown an interest in painting and engineering since his early childhood. This interest, which soon became a passion, crystallized into a major academic pursuit starting first at the university of Damascus. Here, he excelled for several years and received a bachelor's degree in computer engineering and artificial intelligence in 2013, before attending the University of Joseph-Fourier in Grenoble, France, where he received a Master's degree in human-machine interaction in 2015.

He has published a number of scientific papers in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning, which were published between 2013 and 2015. He has also spent time as a visiting researcher at the design laboratory of the technical university of Copenhagen. During the same period, he designed and deployed three games that were generated automatically without a designer, based on artificial intelligence.

Mohammed moved to Amsterdam in 2016 to work for the educational company Squla, which is concerned with transforming scientific content into an interactive activity.

Mohammed Shaker's scientific and professional work received attention from the TechCity UK Foundation in Britain, classifying him as an extraordinary first-level talent in 2018, after which he moved to London.

During his career, Mohammed has also been credited with running the technical side of NFX company in Britain, a medical professional company that helps stroke patients.

From London, where he has been living since 2018, Mohammed launched his first Arab startup company Al-Meta, which specializes in understanding and analyzing Arabic using artificial intelligence. At the beginning of 2020, he launched the “Mind Phrenology” educational platform for junior high school students. Both he and his team are additionally currently working on launching a new educational platform, called Alphazed, an artificially-intelligent educational platform for unconventional education of Arab children.

Arab-Swiss entrepreneurs: In a postmodernism age, with the results of the communication and information revolution, today's world is flooded with contradictory information and news, often coming to intercept facts approved by scientific complexes, such as the hazards of smoking, the necessity of traffic signals, and the denial of proven and documented incidents and facts at a high level. The process of obtaining knowledge and information-building has become a selective process that is subject to the person's desires and ideological orientations, how do you think “The Meta” can help to solve this dilemma in the Arab region?

Mohamed Shaker: This is a very important question. There are two important points I would like to talk about here.

1. The problem of opinion from one point of view is that we are all born in a certain environment with a certain background and beliefs. All of this shapes who we are, and why we hold on to a particular belief. Our instinct is to agree more with opinions consistent with our ideological background and to attack and rebut opinions that are different from our ideological background. This is very common among us.

Therefore, our first goal in Meta was to be an unaffiliated platform, and to be a platform for showing all views to all Arabs. This is why, in Meta we have worked for four months to develop a system that automatically works to identify and consolidate articles on the same topic in one place (what we call in AI "one cluster" or "cluster"). Within each cluster, we automatically identify the views of each article and compare them with the views of other articles. We also automatically summarize these articles under "the most important thing to know about this news." All of this is then shown to the user to be aware of different points of view and to be aware of the importance of understanding them. See appendix:

We recently added the "News related to this topic" feature to any article. For example, you might see that in this article:

You'll see articles from other news sources on the same subject directly below them, along with the quality rating of their content. All of this is to give the user the right tools to dive into content better, more consciously and more deeply, whenever he or she wants.

We humans don't like absolute things, we like comparisons. A way of evaluating the quality of content and comparing several articles with similar content is the best method to achieve that outcome.

2. We use a non-human unguided agent to examine the content. I think the human factor is always skewed toward one viewpoint even if he or she doesn’t want it to. The existence of "correctly-controlled" industrial intelligence makes this process more reliable. You will find that we have dedicated our services to artificial intelligence. Anyone can enter any link to any Arab article and immedaitely understand the quality of its content. This service is also programmed using an API interface for any Arab or foreign company that wants to measure the quality of any given content. You can look at the appendices.

Arab-Swiss entrepreneurs: Google's search engine has been criticized for its work in selecting top stories on the basis that the highest payer will appear on top of the search results. Although Google's top news application was launched in 2018, which gave priority to reliable news at the expense of the "client experience" model and the most push sites, the problem remains. What are the criteria of selecting news on the Meta application? Do you have contracts of some kind with news sites, newspapers or news agencies?.

Mohamed Shaker: think that statement is quite right. It’s the "ethical AI" or "ethical intelligence" problem, which is a problem in any system that uses artificial intelligence. I will give you an example. In the area of autonomous vehicles, if for some reason the probability of an accident is 100%, will the "smart system" decide to crash into a child, an old man, or a wall (and cause the driver's inevitable death)? Will the intelligent system choose to save the driver and cause the old man to die because he is old or it will choose the child? All of these are questions we must ask, know their answer, and set controls. I think that in “Al-Meta” we are very much highlighting this concept. That is why we are among the very few Arab companies worldwide that publish how they build their artificial intelligence systems for advertising. For the simple reason that we want our audience to know how our systems work, to be available to all, and to add or request a modification. Despite our very small team size and the very high cost of these documents, we’ve done it from the first day of the platform. We now have over 100 articles on our blog – http://almeta.io/blog

Arab-Swiss entrepreneurs: The launch of a new application or platform needs at least six months, as industry professionals say, but with your six-member team, you can launch the Meta app and two educational platforms within a standard period (3-4 months), can you tell us what this success is all about?

Mohamed Shaker: It's best if I break this down into two points.

1. Team effort. Our team members are very carefully selected. My two main requirements for their recruitment were that they had designed or completed a perfect project from 0 to 100 themselves before. Second, they can take any idea from a mere concept to a final software product themselves. I think that when you set the hiring criteria bar so high, you will always be pleased later down the line. I met with 200 people to eventually choose four technical people. The hardest step in defining them as an engineering structure was switching them over from what they were used to in Arab countries. All of them surprised me with their willingness to learn and their ability to adapt very quickly. That's what I love about our team.
2. I think my previous experience working with Western start-ups was beneficial. In addition, I experienced the transition from being specialist in artificial intelligence to becoming more of a generalist, which means I constantly want to know more about everything. After I moved to the UK, I joined an emerging company where I was the only tech person, which helped me to learn a lot. This is because the process led me to employ everything I had learned in the past to create, design and implement a product from the idea stage to creating a complete platform by myself. It gave me the understanding of how to build complete products and projects from scratch without fear. It’s something I’ve gone through four times so far. In each case I went from nothing to a full product. This process would give any entrepreneur great self-confidence, since very few programmers are now generalists who can build complete systems themselves. My reading of books in different fields (including non-technical literature) has actually helped me within technical fields. I try to read 70-90 books a year. I think it has changed my thinking completely within the last ten years. It made me think differently to the conventional wisdom about the world of work (and outside of work too).

The Swiss Arab entrepreneurs: the spread of the covid 19 epidemic has affected all economic and social life, and the education sector has suffered most of the damage caused by the epidemic. You have had an impact on facing the effects of the epidemic on the education sector in the Arab region by launching the Alphazid and Mind Phrenology educational platforms. What can you tell us about these platforms? Where do you find the medium-term future for digital education in the Arab region?

Mohamed Shaker: We started about four months before the COVID outbreak with the launch of the “Mind Phrenology" platform for secondary and tertiary students and their psychological support, which is a completely overlooked aspect of the secondary "signs." If schools and universities continue to be closed, we will focus more on the "Mind Phrenology" and within two weeks we will have launched an integrated learning application that also incorporates the educational aspect of the secondary grades. Its simple function is to provide all educational videos from the best teachers and schools in one platform and to make search and web services available to everyone. The application is free for everyone and is available to any secondary or tertiary student. Then we’ve also focused on an app for younger kids 6-12 years old with "alphazed." We could have launched it on May 5, 2020. But I eventually decided to delay and build up it to provide an educational environment for children that is completely different from any other educational application, Arab or foreign. The application delivers content in the same way we learn as we are young, which is in a conversational and the anecdotal style rather than the conventional learning style (you can see some prototypes here: https://thealphazed.com/). I wanted it Arabic with a new creative Arabic sense, so applying Al-Fazid takes a lot of my interest at the moment and will be available in July of 2020.

Arab-Swiss entrepreneurs: Twitter recently announced that it would allow its employees to work remotely permanently even after the (COVID 19) shutdown is over. Can twitter's actions be considered an indicator of a telecommuting model of the business landscape in the near future, Or will the expansion of the adoption of the tele-business model remain a casual issue that retreats with the end of the virus-related closure (COVVE19)?

Mohamed Shaker: I think we can reshape the question, will COVID affect only the business sector or life in general? Here in the West, there is a great concern, for example, about public transportation. I think those concerns are legitimate. You can ask the question, when will you feel safe riding on London's public transport? In most cases that won’t be until there is a vaccine and it is available to everyone. Because it is impossible to imagine being in London Underground without the rush-hour crowds of 8:30 a.m, I think that this will shape our overall lives for the next of the year, at least in the West. I think that will lead us to be more dynamic as human beings. Not only due to COVID, but how we are aligned with any other future habits. As Darwin says: The species that will remain is the most adaptable species, not necessarily the strongest. So I think that same concept applies perfectly to today’s Arab companies, including those of foreigners.

Arab-Swiss entrepreneurs: Through your experience in the remote working environment, what challenges and benefits do you have from adopting this model?

Mohamed Shaker: I think it is a process that can be measured from three points of view.

1. From the company's point of view: The freedom to choose the most efficient methods without hindrance from geographical locations.
2. From the employee's point of view (called the word "abday" in Meta): Having the freedom to plan their time and choose how their day is divided. They have more time for themselves to learn new things or to spend time with their family.
3. From the point of view of the country where the employee lives: I think the economic recovery is very good in this case in the Arab countries, which have competent young people who want to learn and work on efficient projects. This is a very important point at this moment in time because of the current situation of the Arab countries.

Arab-Swiss entrepreneurs: Projects that you have launched are self-financing, and so far there have been no profit yeilding through these projects, what is your future plan to achieve financial gains through these projects?

Mohamed Shaker: Although I have reservations about the behavior of Elon Musk recently, I will always remember him saying what I have always thought of since the beginning of these projects: "When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor." Its meaning is that: "When you work on things of importance, you make an effort for their success even if the circumstances and opportunities are against you."

With reference to our learning application, I think the current situation in the Arab region (outside the Gulf region) for education and content projects is difficult and unprofitable in the short term and, therefore, will be difficult in the long term. Arab startups are moving away from the main problems in our country and are focusing on many unhelpful apps at the expense of useful apps. Unfortunately, useful applications are not profitable and have little audience because of the country's difficult situation, most app users are looking for something that distracts them, putting their mind at ease.

But, I like to do this because it is important for my people and nation and I think I can do a lot in this aspect because of my background in engineering, education, and design. I think it is a background that makes it incumbent on me to bring experience to my people. This is what many Arab expatriates in the West overlook when they forget things that tie them to their homeland.

At the same time, I do not think it is a good thing to see that the project is not profit-making and far-reaching. Because if we can't afford it, we won't be able to deliver our products as originally intended.

Thinking 100 years forward changes your view of things. I like to think at the start of a learning project like Alphazed about what the world will look like 100 years from now. Its impact will not be visible until the current generation expands and I won’t even be here by the year 2100. But if we start it now, we will have added and improved the education of generations to come. Not just one generation, but every generation from today to 2100 and beyond.

Thinking now about the financial return, if we can deliver the most useful and best learning experience 100 times but at one tenth of the cost of others, and make it available for 100 million users instead of 10,000, then we have achieved a financial return that is sufficient to achieve a long-term vision for the next 100 years. We can also reap a financial dividend that will drive us to change generations to come, not just a single generation. This is my idea for an educational project like Alphazed.

For the Meta, the subject is similar. What can the Meta do? In 100 years? I think the Meta is much bigger than that. There are no limits to the amount of creativity and growth that can occur, for Arab minds in particular and for the wider human population in general. If we can change from Arab reality based on a one-view theory and if we can provide services to other companies to use this tech in new applications, our influence will not be limited to 300 million Arabs, but available for any human being and person who believe in the cohesion of ideas.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are sure to have heard of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML): it is the current buzzword, and every technology company worth its salt talks about how AI is going to transform everything.

The strange thing is that most business leaders, especially in consumer businesses, claim to be excited about AI, but they will be hard-pressed to give a tangible example of how AI has been used in their business, or what difference it has made to business performance.

So, is this all just hype, or is there some real impact that AI is going to have on businesses? If you think about your everyday life, it is almost certain that AI-based technologies are an integral part of your everyday experience.

See content and posts that you like on social media? Powered by AI algorithms.

Talk to your smartphone assistant to search for answers, or set a reminder? AI again. Order food on a food aggregator app, and chat with customer support? You’re likely talking to a machine for the first few minutes.

If you watched the latest Google I/O, you’d have seen the new Duplex AI, where it can have whole conversations with real humans, and do things like book appointments for you.

AI is slowly but surely transforming the way consumers experience the world by allowing for personalized and easy experiences.

The algorithms are able to gobble up the vast amounts of data created every second, and use it to predict and take decisions on what is most likely to be relevant and appeal to different people.

This is leading to consumers increasingly living in an “easyverse,” an easy universe of connected and seamless experiences.

What’s more, AI and ML gets better at its job as it learns from data and interactions.

For any business to survive, being able to be part of this easyverse, and provide consumers with the experience they have come to expect is critical. To be able to compete, deploying AI is going to be mission critical.

So, what are the areas where AI is likely to have maximal impact in the short-term? While there are several long-term bets being made, from self-driving cars to cyborg technology or robots as friends, here are a few of the tangible competitive advantages consumer businesses should be looking for immediately.

1. Quicker, better insights
Say a business wants to know why sales are down the previous week. The traditional way would have taken a team of analysts a few days to come up with answers, and the accuracy of these answers would be limited by what questions have been asked. With AI, tens of thousands of questions can be processed, and the impact of these factors on the business can be assessed in mere seconds.

It can throw up surprising insights on what action is likely to have most impact on the business. This can be an incredible advantage in a fast moving and evolving environment.

2. Personalized and connected experiences
AI can learn from your consumer’s behavior, and make predictions of what they may like.

This allows for the most relevant products and recommendations to be served up.

In various studies, it has been proven that personalization improves conversion by as much as 30%-50%. Think big marketplaces like Amazon, where each customer sees a different set of products and recommendations based on what is most relevant.

This is now easily possible on your brand website!

3. Better, 24x7 customer service
Deploying AI as chatbots and using natural language processing algorithms as call agents means that they can do a credible job of handling and resolving the vast majority of routine queries that typically hit customer service centers. This allows for quicker resolution, 24x7 service, lower cost and, of course, happier customers!

4. Automation, personalization of campaigns, and marketing ROI
Marketing is typically an area with a lot of spend and where it is difficult to keep track of return on investment (ROI).

As American marketer John Wanamaker famously said: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” With AI tools, it is now possible to manage campaigns on an individual level, with each consumer being put on their personalized lifecycle, with messaging that is almost unique, tailored to their unique behavior and needs.

It is also possible to track thousands of signals across the marketing lifecycle, both in traditional and digital media to continually optimize the marketing mix and improve sales performance and marketing ROI. Indeed, the holy grail for any marketer!

5. New powerful streams of data from offline stores
The past decade has been a story of online marketplaces and e-commerce stealing consumers away from offline retail.

While convenience and easy experiences are an important factor, with the advent of omni-channel retail, offline retailers are able to hold their own and, in fact, have an edge in providing consumers with a great experience.

A big gap however, continues to be the amount of data available, and how it can be used to create personalized experiences, and to optimize the business. In the online world, you know who is visiting the mobile site or app, what they are looking at, how much time they are spending, and so on and so forth. This was typically information that was just not available offline.

Now with AI tools including computer vision and natural language processing, it is possible to anonymize and track visitors to store, generate style profiles, track trends, identify hot zones and in effect create an offline clickstream.

This data can have profound impact on the consumer experience and business results- with sales impact of upwards of 10%!

These are just a few of the key areas where every consumer business should be looking to deploy AI-powered solutions so as to be able to win with their consumers.

There are several reasons as to why, a lot of businesses are not able to make meaningful progress in driving digital transformation that delivers results, let alone deploying AI within the business; but that is a conversation for another time!

source: entrepreneur