Jürgen Schmidhuber, director of AI at Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), has expressed support for the kingdom’s AI investments under its Vision 2030 initiatives.

He sees these efforts as crucial for advancing global AI capabilities.

Schmidhuber recognizes Saudi Arabia’s investments in infrastructure to become a tech hub amid rising global competition, especially with the United States and China.

Known for his work in deep learning and neural networks, Schmidhuber co-founded the AI startup Nnaisense in 2014 and previously worked at the IDSIA AI lab in Switzerland.

He believes AI can help solve real-world challenges, particularly in healthcare and robotics, rather than lead to dystopian outcomes.

He also predicts that smaller and cost-effective AI systems will democratize the technology and reduce reliance on large data centers.