Industry-specific AI solutions from the UAE

UAE

Andrew Jackson, CEO of Inception, talks to The Energy Year about developing practical AI tools for the UAE’s oil and gas sector and the company’s efforts to establish best practices for the deployment of AI through the Responsible AI Foundation. Inception is a G42 company that develops AI-powered products and enterprise business solutions.

How has Inception been evolving within AI trends in the UAE and internationally?
Inception began as an AI research and development unit and in 2023 entered a new phase focused on generative AI. Since then, Inception’s strategy has revolved around looking at the UAE’s major development themes and figuring out how to support them with AI.
With an aim to drive AI advancement in the Middle East and ensure that the Arabic language, with its depth and heritage, finds its voice within the AI landscape, in mid-2023, we announced the open-source release of JAIS, the world’s highest quality Arabic Large Language Model (LLM). This has been followed by the launch of NANDA, a Hindi LLM, and Sherkala, a Kazakh LLM.
We have created products that address the needs of the energy industry, investment companies, sovereign wealth funds and large enterprises. In essence, we transform cutting-edge AI research into meaningful real-world applications that have a positive impact on people’s lives.

How willing is the UAE’s energy industry to adopt AI and advanced technologies?
Interest in our generative AI and digital twin tools has been quite encouraging. General AI models fail to meet the specialised needs of the energy industry, and hence we focused on creating tailored solutions and leveraging unique organisational data. We also integrated safeguards into the development process and carefully balanced the needs of engineers, management and developers.
Building AI models from scratch leads to deeper understanding and practical applications that address specific industry challenges. For example, automated seismic analysis and multimodal models enable faster, more accurate data interpretation.

Are you planning to expand outside the UAE?
African countries such as Ghana, Uganda and Angola want to invest more in oil exploration and production but lack infrastructure. Greenfield developments offer opportunities to integrate advanced technologies directly. Kenya’s geothermal energy plans could also greatly benefit from AI integration.
Abu Dhabi is our test bed for innovations, and we look at the USA and countries in Europe, Africa and Asia as deployment markets. The UAE is already playing a central role in driving advancements for enhancing energy and distribution systems. This could be just the beginning of many great possibilities.

What are the main elements of Inception’s growth strategy for the next few years?
As far as the energy industry is concerned, in the next few years, we want to expand our work through a multi-year integration of new technologies. We want to grow our portfolio of partners and clients internationally and are constantly attracting new global partnerships and building an international ecosystem for our innovations.
Overall, we will continue to bring to market industry-specific AI-powered products and expand our suite of enterprise business solutions. We will also continue to develop AI products and services while maintaining a cross-industry perspective and help position the UAE and G42 as leaders in AI.
We also want to double down on our Responsible AI Foundation, launched in collaboration with Microsoft and MBZUAI [Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence], to foster the ethical deployment of AI. The foundation’s purpose is to act as a counterbalance to the rush of AI implementation and to determine the right and responsible course of action, and it advises government bodies and regulators in the UAE, particularly in the energy space, on best practices and responsible use.

Read our latest insights on:

• Angola
• Ghana
• UAE
• Uganda
• USA