Powering Innovation – The CEO of SambaNova Systems praises Saudi Investment in AI

Saudi Arabia is committed to powering the next generation of artificial intelligence and harnessing its benefits for the good of humanity. This was the central message at this year’s GAIN Summit, a global AI conference held at the King Abdulaziz International Convention Centre in Riyadh between 10-12 September. The summit, which was organised by the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA), attracted over 400 speakers from more than 100 countries, and brought together experts, companies and policymakers from East and West, including global tech giants such as Google, Microsoft and Huawei. 

Following this ground-breaking global summit, Sir Martyn Lewis sat down with Rodrigo Liang, CEO and Co-Founder of SambaNova Systems – the Silicon Valley-based company that is fuelling the next wave of AI innovation. Liang, who attended the GAIN Summit, told Sir Martyn about how his company has recently pioneered new technologies for Aramco and struck deals with promising Saudi startups. He also praised Saudi Arabia’s commitment to powering innovation in artificial intelligence and offered his views on how AI is rapidly transforming the world.

Sir Martyn Lewis (ML) – You have what you call a purpose-built enterprise scale AI platform that is the technology backbone for the next generation of AI computing. So how important do you think the GAIN Summit in Saudi Arabia was for the development of AI?

Rodrigo Liang (RL) – It’s incredibly important just to bring together all the different folks and different ideas of how to do this. This is going to be a multi-year journey and you see the focus and commitment in the region for developing artificial intelligence, and that goes from building hardware to software, models, training, ecosystem and things like that. So it was really, really great to be part of it and to see all the energy and excitement for artificial intelligence in the region. There’s been a very intentional goal in Saudi Arabia to promote AI as the next frontier, and it was great to see so many companies participating in that.  

ML – And what do you think was the main message coming from the conference to the rest of the world, not just to companies but to people and to governments as well?

RL – Well, I think it’s “the time is now”. I think you see all the energy of companies large and small making their moves and their investments now because you’ve got to get started. I think we talked a lot about various issues on the technology side, on the change management side and on the regulatory side, but I think the main message is “we’ve got to start”. We’ve got to get going; we’ve got to figure out how to actually start integrating this technology into our everyday lives and learn all that we need to learn in order to make the most out of it.

ML – And were there any conclusions about how business and government should try to balance the benefits of AI against the risks, or is that still to be resolved?

RL – I think it’s going to be a work in progress. The region is actually thinking in the right way, which is: you’ve got to start and we’ve got to give our teams, our people and our companies a chance to begin learning the technology and learning what they don’t know. It’s hard to regulate when you don’t know everything that you need to know. However, I think it’s a great way to carefully move forwards on the technology by starting to lay down the groundwork for integrating AI into everyday work. We saw this with the internet transition; there were a lot of things that we were concerned about, particularly with data privacy and data security, when the internet came about. We’re in a similar type of phase now where we’ve just got to learn and we’ve got to have our eyes open and figure out how to protect ourselves from the things that aren’t good. We’ve got to give our teams and our people time to adjust and adapt. Otherwise we’re going to be faced with a technology that’s gone way too far ahead while people are left behind. 

ML – So pace is all important, and a lot of learning with care and caution took place at the conference. Do you have any fear as well about the future? 

RL – Well, no. I’ve got a few questions around whether AI will replace jobs. But I think for the most part that AI is going to make us all ten times more productive. We will just become a much more productive society, because we see it with the internet; when the speed of internet came about, we all became a lot more productive. I think AI will do the same. 

ML –  And I see that SDAIA, Saudi Arabia’s special authority for data and artificial intelligence, says that they think the solution is cooperation. They argue, and I quote, that “we can navigate the AI-driven world through collaboration”. Is that kind of collaboration possible or, because of the competitive nature of the business world, does every company and possibly every country end up going its own way? 

RL – No, I think collaboration is going to be imperative. The costs and the investments required to design chips are so big that it’s just impractical for every company or every nation to go and do it by themselves. So it’s really important to partner and figure out how to collaborate. There have been many times in the history of technology when we’ve seen a lot of “co-opetition”, where you have collaborations and cooperation on certain fronts and market competition on others. I think we’re seeing that now, especially as the hyperscale clouds move in and you think about how Nvidia and the hyperscale clouds are in a cooperation environment. So I think we’re going to see that continue to happen in Saudi Arabia and the region as well. 

ML – Any thoughts on how companies and governments should deal with the redundancies that will flow from an increased use of AI? 

RL – Well, I think you’re going to see that there are some things that are no longer needed because AI is going to be able to do it cheaper and faster. It’s going to create an incredibly large demand for new skill sets and new people to do other types of things. There’s already an entire new profession around prompt engineering that’s been created that did not exist prior to ChatGPT showing up. You’re going to see entire new sectors around AI safety and AI ecosystem building and things like that. Again, this is not too different from the internet. Prior to the internet, there were entire economies that did not exist. Yes, it replaced fax machines, but it also created entire industries around cybersecurity and other things that just didn’t exist before. 

ML – What is your hope for SambaNova’s role in the global development of AI?

RL – We’re moving from training to production. The world needs something that is going to perform at scale and that’s going to have the performance that people need in order to do real-time AI, and ultimately do it in a way that’s really power efficient. AI is going to be one of those things that’s going to grow at an exponential rate, but currently we just do not have enough power on this planet to be able to do what we want to do. At SambaNova, we are the most efficient platform for AI and we run the highest performance models with the highest accuracy. For companies looking for a highly efficient, low-power type of computational platform, we are number one, and we’re able to provide that on a cloud or using on-premises infrastructure or in any type of deployment that they need. 

ML – So as well as being a speaker and taking part in a panel debate, you were basically in selling mode as well in Saudi Arabia. Is that right? 

RL –  Yes, but we’ve been in the region for quite a while. We powered Saudi Aramco’s Metabrain, and we’ve been in there for over a year now. That’s an internal GPT model that is actually built for Aramco’s internal, private use, and it’s 100% powered by SambaNova. We announced two partnerships at the GAIN Summit: one with stc pay and one with Tamkeen Technologies. These are two incredible companies in the region that we announced partnerships with this time and we’re using those relationships to help us continue to grow our presence in the region. 

ML – How do you see Saudi Arabia’s role developing in the future of AI? What’s their global position in this? 

RL – Well, I think that the Saudis’ commitment to the technology and their commitment to actually drive a multi-year, multi-decade journey is going to be really important. It’s going to be something that you have to continue to invest in over long periods of time, and I think, as we’ve seen previously with continuous investment in technology, a lot of new things come out of it.

I think we’re in the early stages of the technology and there are a lot of new products, new services and new technologies that will emerge. So this continuous investment in AI, and actually being consistent about it, is going to be incredibly valuable over the coming years. 

ML – So you think we should all be excited about the development of AI? 

RL – One hundred per cent! AI is here and AI is going to change the world in a way that there’s no going back from in the same way that the internet did. It transformed the planet and none of us today can imagine a world where the internet isn’t a part of our lives. In a few years, we’ll all be using AI and wonder how we actually lived without it. So I think that commitment to AI, and the continuing focus on enabling people to take advantage of it, enabling people to be able to adjust and adapt and use technology, is vital. I think it’s incredibly important for us to ensure that this technology transition is successful. 

Rodrigo Liang, CEO of SambaNova Systems