Saudi Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources Bandar bin Ibrahim Al-Khorayef stressed that the Kingdom took advantage of various technologies to achieve growth in the industrial and mining sectors, and that technology enables business owners to be productive and effective.
Taking part in a panel discussion titled "Where Manufacturing and Tech Collide", held as part of the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Special Meeting in Riyadh today, Al-Khorayef talked about the transformation witnessed by the manufacturing sector over the past 25 years, which has served many countries, including the Kingdom, and about advanced solutions to lower the carbon footprint, stressing the importance of developing human capital by helping youths interested in technological advancements.
The minister also tackled infrastructure development and preparing regulations and guidelines to secure reliable use of information and data usage, and cybersecurity, and future programs that target 4,000 factories, SPA reported.
He stressed the importance of developing an economic system that takes advantage of technologies like digital twin and 5G for operating and managing the mining sector, especially in remote areas.
Al-Khorayef also spoke about the Saudi industrial base, which has the largest number of active entities and plays a main role in turning ideas into real solutions, making use of technologies that contribute added value to countries.

The Saudi Electronic University (SEU), in collaboration with HP and AMD, has launched the “GameOn” hackathon, held under the theme “From Diriyah, the ancient capital, to Neom, the city of the future".
This event challenges participants to bridge the gap between Saudi Arabia's rich history and futuristic vision.
Hackathon supervisor Dr. Asmaa Al-Hammadi said that the goal of the event is to equip students with essential knowledge and skills in programming, game development, and e-sports management in order to foster healthy competition among university students, and drive them to excel in innovative outcomes that demonstrate Saudi culture and heritage while making a global impact, SPA reported.
She said that the registration for the hackathon is set to close on May 10, 2024. Eligible to participate are students enrolled in a bachelor's program who may register using their university email account.
Teams may be formed by students from different universities and the proposed project should be consistent with Saudi culture and heritage. A team may consist of a minimum of two and a maximum of three students; team members must have passed at least 70% of one of the self-paced learning courses.
Al-Hammadi added that the hackathon consists of three rounds. In the first round, participants submit the outline of an electronic game Storyboard with an explanation of the graphics, backgrounds, and visual elements. They must also highlight the game's connection to Saudi culture and heritage.
Moving on to the second round, the teams will start creating and programming the electronic game, making it operable on computers. During this phase, a winner will be selected for each category in the elimination stage.
The qualifying teams will then proceed to the third stage, during which SEU will incubate the winning projects, provide technical support, and establish connections with potential investors.
The hackathon offers valuable prizes in three challenge categories.
Real-World Games depict real-world Saudi cultural heritage, including historical events, traditional art, shared values, and storytelling elements. Examples include National Day and Founding Day.
Location-Based Games enhance players' experience at Saudi heritage sites, and combine gaming elements with real-world heritage exploration, offering interactive and educational opportunities to learn about cultural heritage in specific locations like Diriyah and AlUla.
Discovery Games involve physical artifacts, history, archaeology, and art, providing insights into Saudi cultural heritage through virtual museum experiences, historical sites, and archaeological landmarks like UNESCO sites in Saudi Arabia.
These games offer interactive and educational opportunities to learn about cultural heritage in specific locations, such as Diriyah, AlUla, and Asir, and aim to reveal monuments, historical evidence, arts, and costumes related to Saudi cultural heritage through virtual museums.

Minister of Municipal, Rural Affairs, and Housing Majid bin Abdullah Al-Hogail, Chairman of the Housing Program Committee, met with the Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of China, Ni Hong, in Beijing to discuss ways to strengthen cooperation between Saudi Arabia and China in areas of mutual interest. This meeting was attended by the Saudi Ambassador to China, Abdulrahman bin Ahmad Al-Harbi.
During the meeting, the two ministers discussed opportunities for cooperation in developing housing policies and programs, including exchanging experiences and best practices in city planning, sustainable urban development, investing in construction technology, and exploring investment opportunities to establish real estate and infrastructure projects within residential communities.
The two ministers reviewed successful experiences in providing housing solutions and options, increasing citizens' opportunities to own homes, and exchanging experiences in urban management and its best practices. The Minister of Municipal, Rural Affairs, and Housing emphasized the importance of strengthening the partnership and aligning the Kingdom's Vision 2030 with the Belt and Road Initiative. He stated that this alignment will positively impact the economic status and aspirations of the Kingdom and China globally. He also expressed the intention of attracting the best Chinese construction companies to benefit from their expertise in enhancing housing units in various regions of the Kingdom in order to achieve the goals of the housing program—one of the programs of the Kingdom's Vision 2030—by providing various housing and financing options for citizens.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is opening an investigation into Ford Motor's hands-free driving technology BlueCruise after two fatal crashes involving Mustang Mach-E SUVs striking parked vehicles, the agency said on Monday.

The agency's preliminary evaluation into 130,000 2021-2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles is the first step to determine whether the vehicles pose an unreasonable risk to safety.

Ford said it is working with the NHTSA to support its investigation.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has opened separate investigations into the two Mach-E crashes, including a Feb. 24 crash of a Ford Mustang Mach-E using BlueCruise which struck the rear of a stationary Honda CR-V on Interstate Highway 10 in San Antonio, Texas, killing the 56-year-old Honda driver.

The NTSB is also investigating a March 3 crash in Philadelphia involving a Ford Mach-E, the other crash cited by the NHTSA, according to Reuters.

The auto safety regulator said Monday its initial investigation confirmed that BlueCruise was engaged immediately prior to the collision in the Philadelphia crash.

NHTSA previously opened special crash investigations into both fatal incidents. Both occurred during "nighttime lighting conditions," the agency said.

Ford offers BlueCruise, an advanced hands-free driving system that operates on 97% of U.S. and Canadian highways with no intersections or traffic signals. The system uses a camera-based driver monitoring system to determine driver attentiveness.

The NHTSA investigation includes Mach-E vehicles with Co-Pilot360 Active 2.0 that have a number of driver assistance technologies including BlueCruise, which was introduced in 2021 and is currently available in a range of Ford and Lincoln vehicles.

The investigation will evaluate the system's performance on the dynamic driving task and driver monitoring, NHTSA said.

Last week, the NHTSA opened a probe into whether a Tesla recall of more than 2 million vehicles announced in December to install new Autopilot software updates was adequate to ensure drivers are paying attention. The updates follow a series of crashes.

NHTSA opened the investigation after receiving reports of 20 crashes involving vehicles that had the new Autopilot software updates. It said at least 13 fatalities had occurred in which "foreseeable driver misuse of the system played an apparent role."

A private jet linked to Tesla CEO Elon Musk landed in Beijing on Sunday, a flight tracking app showed, as two people with knowledge of the matter said the billionaire was kicking off a surprise visit to the automaker's second-biggest market.

Musk is seeking to meet senior Chinese officials in Beijing to discuss the rollout of Full-Self Driving (FSD) software in China and to obtain approval to transfer data collected in the country abroad to train algorithms for its autonomous driving technologies, one of the people said.

Tesla has since 2021 stored all data collected by its Chinese fleet in Shanghai as required by Chinese regulators and has not transferred any back to the United States.

The US electric vehicle maker rolled out FSD, the most autonomous version of its Autopilot software, four years ago but has yet to make it available in China despite customers urging it to do so.

Musk said this month Tesla may make FSD available to customers in China "very soon", in response to a query on social media platform X.

Rival Chinese automakers such as Xpeng have been seeking to gain an advantage over Tesla by rolling out similar software.

Musk's visit to China was not flagged publicly and the people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with media. Tesla did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

The trip came just over a week after he scrapped a planned visit to India to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, citing "very heavy Tesla obligations."

The company said this month it would lay off 10% of its global workforce as it grapples with falling sales and an intensifying price war for EVs led by Chinese brands.

LANDED IN BEIJING

A Gulfstream private jet with tail number N272BG, which is registered to Falcon Landing, a company connected to SpaceX and Tesla, landed at Beijing Capital Airport on Sunday at 0603 GMT, according to Chinese flight tracking app Flight Manager.

The other jet registered under Falcon Landing is N628TS, which is Musk's main jet that he used to travel to China on his last trip nearly a year ago, when he met with Chinese government officials in Beijing and visited Tesla's Shanghai factory.

Tesla has sold more than 1.7 million cars in China since it entered the market a decade ago and the Shanghai factory is its largest globally.

Musk's visit coincides with the Beijing autoshow, which opened last week and ends on May 4. Tesla does not have a booth at China's largest autoshow and last attended in 2021.

GM CEO Mary Barra made an unannounced visit to the show in the world's biggest auto market on Friday, according to two people with knowledge of her schedule. GM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Also on Friday, Grace Tao, Tesla's vice president in charge of external relations in China, published a commentary on the social media account of state media outlet People's Daily, arguing that autonomous driving technologies would be the new growth engine for EV industry.

Tao said in the article that Tesla was leading autonomous driving research and development with its "end-to-end neural network" technology and data collected from millions of cars on the road.

China's complicated traffic conditions with more pedestrians and cyclists than in many other markets provide more scenarios that are key for training autonomous driving algorithms at a faster pace, according to industry experts.

Musk said last week Tesla would introduce new, cheaper models using its current EV platforms and production lines and would offer a new "robotaxi" with self-driving technology. He said in a post on X this month that he would unveil the robotaxi on Aug. 8.

Tesla shares are down almost a third since the start of the year as concerns have grown about the EV maker's growth trajectory. Last week, Tesla reported its first decline in quarterly revenue since 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic slowed production and deliveries.

Ayman Chaudhary turned her love for reading into a living on TikTok, posting video snippets about books like those banned in schools in ultra-conservative parts of the United States.
Now the online platform she relies on to support her family is poised to be banned in what entrepreneurs using TikTok condemn as an attack on their livelihoods, said AFP.
"It's so essential to small businesses and creators; it's my full-time job," the 23-year-old Chicago resident told AFP.
"It makes me really worried that I live in a country that would pass bans like these instead of focusing on what's actually important, like gun control and healthcare and education."
A new US law put TikTok's parent, Chinese tech giant ByteDance, on a nine-month deadline to divest the hugely popular video platform or have it banned in the United States.
US lawmakers argued that TikTok can be used by the Chinese government for espionage and propaganda as long as it is owned by ByteDance.
"Everybody who's involved in deciding whether or not this platform is going to get banned is turning a blind eye to how it's going to affect all of the small businesses," said Bilal Rehman of Texas.
His @bilalrehmanstudio TikTok account, which playfully promotes his company's interior design projects, has some 500,000 followers.
"They don't really understand social media and how it works," the 24-year-old added.
TikTok has gone from a novelty to a necessity for many US small businesses, according to an Oxford Economics study backed by the platform.
TikTok fuels growth for more than seven million businesses in the United States, helping generate billions of dollars and supporting more than 224,000 jobs, the study determined.
"It's become such a huge part of our economy that taking that away is going to be devastating to millions of people," Rehman said of TikTok.
Chaudhary took to TikTok to share her passion for reading in early 2020 while enduring Covid-19 lockdowns.
"I made a handful of videos and, long story short, one went viral," Chaudhary said.
Opportunities to make money from sponsors or advertising came as her audience grew, and posting on her @aymansbooks TikTok account became a job.
She saw books she extolled snapped up by readers, as she shined attention on titles banned from schools or libraries in parts of the country.
Unique vibe
A TikTok ban would be a particularly hard blow to businesses just starting out, according to eMarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg.
"Social media has democratized the commerce landscape, and TikTok really supercharged that," Enberg told AFP.
"It's become a crucial platform for many small businesses, especially those that are in niche industries or sell quirky products."
One factor setting TikTok apart from rival platforms is the potential for videos to be spread quickly by a highly engaged audience, according to Enberg.
"The potential to be discovered on TikTok is really unparalleled, and that's largely thanks to its algorithm as well as the entertaining kind of content that it hosts," she said.
A young generation is using TikTok as a search engine of sorts, making queries as they might on Google and seeing what the algorithm serves up, said SOCi director of market insights Damian Rollison.
"It feels like it has been created by your peers, so they're telling you the real deal about whatever the topic might be," Rollison said of the trend.
TikTok lovers say it has a unique style that will be missed in the case of a ban.
"There is definitely a different vibe on TikTok versus YouTube or Instagram," said Chaudhary.
"TikTok has a lot more humor in it and a lot more creativity than I see happening on Instagram."
"My favorite part about TikTok is, it feels almost like you're on a FaceTime call with your friend," Rehman said.
"It feels really raw and authentic."
Rollison advised businesses relying on TikTok to make contingency plans in event of a ban, sticking with short-form video, given the appetite for such content.
"The demand signals are so powerful amongst younger users that I believe the usage patterns are going to survive any of the outcomes," Rollison said.
"Learning that ecosystem is not only a useful but even critical strategy."

Intel shares slumped more than 12% on Friday after a downbeat forecast signaled that the boom in AI was diverting enterprise spending away from its traditional data center chips.

The stock has fallen around 30% so far this year as Intel trails rival chip companies such as Nvidia in producing advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips and components.

Intel forecast second-quarter revenue of $12.5 billion to $13.5 billion, compared with analysts' average estimate of $13.57 billion, according to LSEG data.

"While we believe they are doing everything they can to try to repair things, it is clear the company is profoundly broken, and it will take years to see the fruits of their (currently exhaustive) labor," Bernstein analysts said in a note.

Intel is planning a $100 billion spending spree across four US states to build and expand factories. It also unveiled a new AI chip earlier this year to keep up with competition.

Friday's drop was set to erase nearly $19 billion from the company's market value, which stood at $149.4 billion as of Thursday's close.

Businesses have prioritized spending on advanced and speedy AI server chips, hurting demand for Intel's central processing units, which had long been the mainstay chip powering data centers.

Although encouraged by the launch of Intel's Gaudi 3 AI chip, "we worry the company will continue to cede wallet share within the overall data center compute market to the likes of Nvidia and Arm", Goldman Sachs analysts said.

Still, Intel is optimistic that a fresh upgrade cycle for personal computers around a new version of Microsoft's Windows operating system will help PC sales in the second half of the year. That could translate to more demand for its chips used in those devices.

The company's earnings contrasted strong results from Microsoft and Alphabet, which are Nvidia clients and also design in-house chips for their data centers.

Investors appear to be losing patience with Big Tech's prodigious artificial intelligence investments this week after Meta Platforms signaled deeper spending and a long road to profitability.
The concession from Meta in its quarterly report late on Wednesday cast a cloud over Microsoft and Alphabet , which will both report quarterly earnings on Thursday, Reuters said.
Meta's stock sank 15% in extended trade after it forecast higher AI spending next year, while Microsoft was down 2%, Alphabet fell 3% and Nvidia dropped 1.4% in reaction.
Wall Street's heavyweight tech-related companies have been locked in a fierce battle to advance generative AI, which can create text, videos and photos from prompts and is seen as the next frontier in tech.
During Meta's earnings conference call, analysts peppered CEO Mark Zuckerberg with questions about how the company was pacing its AI investments. One analyst asked whether Meta was spending more because it saw an even bigger opportunity from AI.
"I think we've gotten more ambitious and optimistic on AI," Zuckerberg responded, pointing to Meta's recent launches of new AI models. "So all of that basically encourages me to make sure that we're investing to stay at the leading edge of this."
Alphabet and Microsoft both said earlier this year when they reported fourth-quarter results that they expected rising AI costs. The investor reaction on Wednesday indicated deepening concerns.
In a research note on Monday about Alphabet, analysts from New Street Research said the potential for materially higher capital expenditures was a worry ahead of results on Thursday.
The research firm said it now expects Alphabet's full-year capital expenditures to be $45.9 billion, up from its previous estimate of $42.7 billion.
Google has been working to catch up in the generative AI race and released Gemini, a model that can understand and create different types of information including text, audio and video.
Creating content with generative AI is energy-intensive, and Zuckerberg cited the cost as a reason for Meta's higher expenses.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has positioned itself to be a winner in AI due to its partnership with OpenAI, which kicked off the generative AI craze last year with ChatGPT, said analysts from Jefferies in a note on March 31.
Microsoft has integrated chatbots into its suite of Office products and is planning to invest more in data centers.
Industry-wide, shareholders are now focused on looking for revenue, including pricing models and whether customers can find use cases that justify the cost of generative AI, Jefferies wrote.
"Last year was spent dreaming of gen AI's potential," the analysts wrote. "This year will be about moving forward with concrete steps."

South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group will launch its first India-manufactured electric vehicles by 2025 as the parent of the Hyundai and Kia brands looks to boost its presence in the nascent space dominated by Tata Motors.
Production of Hyundai's locally manufactured EVs will begin by the end of 2024 and will be launched by 2025, along with Kia's India-made EV, the Hyundai Motor Group said in a statement on Thursday, adding that it would unveil five models by 2030, said Reuters.
Both brands will use batteries made by Exide Energy Solutions to power their EVs, they had said earlier this month.
India is the biggest market outside North America and Europe for Hyundai, where its unit is headed for a $3 billion IPO – the country's largest.
Hyundai, India's no. 2 carmaker, known for its top-selling 'Creta' sport utility vehicle, currently sells two electric models in India, the Kona and IONIQ 5, neither of which are produced in the country. Kia's lone electric offering, the EV6, is imported.
The company also reaffirmed Hyundai's target of reaching annual production of 1 million by 2025, adding it would expand capacity at Kia to 432,000 from about 300,000. The combined capacity will grow to 1.5 million units.
Earlier this year, Hyundai completed the acquisition of a former Chevrolet plant in western Maharashtra state as part of its push to get production to 1 million units.
The announcements came during Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung's visit to India – his second in less than a year.

Apple lost its crown as China's biggest smartphone seller in the first quarter of 2024 as its smartphone shipments fell 6.6% from a year ago amid intense competition, preliminary data from research firm IDC showed on Thursday.

Honor and Huawei were tied for the top spot, with Honor's market share rising to 17.1% and Huawei's share climbing to 17%, IDC said, while the iPhone maker's market share fell to 15.6%.

The IDC declares a statistical tie when the difference between the share of revenue or shipments between two or more vendors is 0.1% or less.

"Apple's price promotions in the quarter were unable to mitigate the impact of the intense competition from Android players," Arthur Guo, senior research analyst at IDC China said in the report.

Overall smartphone shipments in China rose 6.5% to 69.3 million units, according to IDC.

Earlier this week, data from research firm Counterpoint showed Apple's smartphone shipments in China tumbled 19% in the first quarter of the year, the worst performance since 2020.