During the inaugural day of the LEAP 2025 conference, held in Riyadh from February 9 to 12, Ahmad Al-Khowaiter, the executive vice president of technology and innovation at Saudi Aramco, highlighted three critical elements necessary for harnessing the full potential of artificial intelligence (AI).

These elements are real-world data, computing power, and skilled personnel.

In his presentation titled "Transforming Industries with Data and AI," Al-Khowaiter underscored that the integration of advanced AI technologies aligns with Saudi Arabia's National Strategy for Data and Artificial Intelligence.

This strategy aims to upskill 40 percent of the workforce to mitigate data and AI illiteracy, and to cultivate a pool of 20,000 specialists in data and AI through targeted training initiatives.

Additionally, the strategy seeks to attract approximately SR75 billion (equivalent to $19.99 billion) in both domestic and international investments, alongside aiding the development of over 300 startups to foster entrepreneurship in the region.

Al-Khowaiter stated, "Maximizing its (AI's) potential requires three main elements, three main enablers.

One is tremendous amounts of real-world data.

You need the data first, then you need to be able to put in place computing power, computing infrastructure to be able to do the models.

Finally, and probably the most important element, is you need the talent.

You need the subject matter experts who can tell you if the model is telling the truth."

The executive also pointed to Saudi Aramco's wealth of over 90 years of proprietary data generated from extensive geological and process surveys.

He noted that the company generates around 10 billion data points each day across its various facilities.

In his address, Al-Khowaiter emphasized that the development of capable AI models is not restricted to major global technology firms.

He stated, "It is within the reach of enterprises, even startups, to design AI suited to their own businesses.

We have believed this from the beginning, developing our own models with our own data."

He introduced the latest innovation, Plant Meta Brain, a time series transformer model that leverages large datasets to enhance operational efficiency.

Al-Khowaiter articulated that this model enables the company to provide actionable insights in real time to operators, engineers, and scientists, thereby allowing for optimized operations and improved demand forecasting.

"Using these large data sets, we’re able to model the real-time processes that underlie our operations," he explained.

"By working in real time with minimal user input, we anticipate demand, optimize operations, predict product qualities, and maximize production."

Al-Khowaiter indicated that this technological approach allows company experts to concentrate on more value-added tasks rather than troubleshooting or creating models from scratch.

He stated, "We believe our AI is only as good as our HI, our human intelligence, and this is why we are training more than 6,000 AI developers across the company."

Furthermore, he described the collaborative efforts between existing engineers, scientists, and operators and the trained AI developers to enhance the robustness and reliability of new models.

In closing, Al-Khowaiter remarked, "Aramco is not only using our unique size and scale to maximize the use of AI on an industrial scale, but our decades’ worth of data."

The LEAP 2025 conference, held under the theme "Into New Worlds," is designed to foster business networking and investment opportunities within the technology sector.

This initiative is pivotal to Saudi Arabia's ambition of becoming a global technology hub, in line with its Vision 2030 strategy, which aims to diversify the economy.

The Kingdom has committed $100 billion towards the advancement of its technology sector.