Doha, Qatar: Qatar is advancing in adoption of cutting edge technologies and its efforts to leverage artificial intelligence are to enhance digital economy and achieve economic diversification.
Highlighting Qatar’s mature legal eco-system and the thriving digital economy, Omar Sherin, Technology Consulting Partner at PwC Middle East in an interview with The Peninsula said, over the years Qatar has invested heavily in a state-of-the-art telecommunication infrastructure that can accommodate the current and future digital needs such as AI and machine learning.
“Due to the mature legal eco-system and the thriving digital economy, Qatar has successfully attracted some of the world’s largest hyper scalers and cloud service providers to invest and establish global hubs and data centers in Qatar that can support not just Qatar, but the wider region’s digital needs as well,” he added.
“The legal construct adopted by Qatar ensures that the large data sets required for AI LLM (Large Language Models) are built ethically and with privacy in mind, which encourages and accelerates the adoption of such cutting edge technologies.”
“This resonated in our latest CEO Survey, which revealed that CEOs in Qatar have demonstrated strong confidence in the transformative potential of GenAI, far surpassing global counterparts; 90 percent of business leaders have adopted GenAI in the last 12 months, compared to 83% globally.
A further 77 percent of CEOs in Qatar expect GenAI to drive revenue growth, compared to 41 percent globally. Additionally, 87 percent reported improved efficiencies in their employees’ work, with a similar proportion indicating that the technology optimised their own efficiency.
That trust in emerging technologies such as AI, is partially due to the existence of a legal framework that sets the right boundaries and encourages innovation,” Sherin added.
He further said, this is important as Qatar is moving forward in its journey from being a predominantly hydrocarbon-based economy to a diversified, knowledge-based one, guided by Third National Development Strategy (NDS-3). With that, the nation is deservedly ranked fifth globally in the 2024 UN E-Government Development Index that reflects its advancement in digital transformation on the global stage, he added.
