A discovery that went unnoticed for almost twenty years has a subtle thrill. While the rest of the world was concerned about sea level rise and melting glaciers, the signal had been hiding inside satellite data from the mid-2000s. Then, using old GRACE recordings, a group of researchers in the United Arab Emirates discovered something off the African Atlantic coast that just did not fit the conventional explanation of shifting ice or water. This kind of discovery raises the question of how many more anomalies are hidden in historical data, just waiting to be discovered by someone with the curiosity…
When I first heard a banker in Dubai explain his morning routine, he laughed, but…
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The King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh doesn’t seem like the birthplace of international tech regulations. Footsteps are absorbed by the thick carpets. Besides the translation headsets are half-finished coffee cups. Attendees lean forward and pay close attention as presenters go over a topic that was previously thought to be solely Californian: the proper conduct of artificial intelligence. Silicon Valley is not the source of this conversation. In collaboration with the Islamic World Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority has started to develop an ethics charter that goes beyond governing AI in the…
Driving in Abu Dhabi these days feels like you’re being watched, but not in the oppressive way you might anticipate. If you’re driving down Sheikh Zayed Road on a Tuesday afternoon, there aren’t any noticeable changes. The traffic is moving. The signals fulfill their purpose. However, beneath that unremarkable exterior, a vast amount of machine learning is sorting through each lane change, brake tap, and instance in which a driver uses a phone for a half-second too long. These are the kinds of numbers that make traffic engineers take notice. Speaking at Gulf Traffic Week, officials said that since 2019,…
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