World Economic Forum Selects Bahrain and UK to Pilot AI Procurement

The Kingdom of Bahrain and The United Kingdom selected to pilot new guidelines for the implementation and procurement of artificial intelligence (AI) in the public sector, as announced by the World Economic Forum (WEF) Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and the Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB) at the WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, China. The board has partnered with the UK government to help create the guidelines and assess them in real-world conditions, piloting the framework and providing feedback.

“Artificial Intelligence can deliver huge benefits to citizens, but it needs a robust framework for successful implementation, and this project with WEF will build a global knowledge-base that can be used by other governments to sustainably and responsibly introduce AI to public sector institutions,” says Chief Executive of EDB, Khalid Al Rumaihi.

AI and machine learning has major potential to streamline and transform services delivery for governments, but public institutions lack the knowledge needed to successfully adopt the technology. Due to that, the centre announced that it would bring governments, businesses and startups together to design and implement guidelines to sustainably deploy AI technology.