The 5 most expensive buildings in the Middle East

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Here is AD with The 5 most expensive buildings in the Middle East and the MENA region.

Designed an an all-stars roster of architecture geniuses, these buildings are soaring symbols of region’s bold ambition.

Riyadh, lensed through the inverted arch void of the city’s iconic Kingdom Centre Tower.Mohammed Bin Mahdi courtesy of Omrania

Today calls for appropriate use of technology in education

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Today’s calls for the appropriate use of technology in education are getting increasingly louder, for it is paramount to prepare for a more hopefully sustainable future.

The above-featured image is for illustration and is credit to UNESCO.

2023 GEM Report out today calls for appropriate use of technology in education

The sixth in the GEM Report series, Technology in education: A tool on whose terms?, urges countries to set their own terms for the way technology is designed and used in education so that it never replaces in-person, teacher-led instruction, and supports the shared objective of quality education for all.

The report is being launched today at an event in Montevideo, Uruguay, hosted by the GEM Report, the Ministry of Education and Culture of Uruguay and Ceibal Foundation with 18 ministers of education from around the world. It proposes a four-point compass that policy makers and educational stakeholders can use when deciding how to deploy technology in education:

1. Is it appropriate?

Using technology can improve some types of learning in some contexts. The report cites evidence showing that learning benefits disappear if technology is used in excess or in the absence of a qualified teacher. For example, distributing computers to students does not improve learning on its own without the engagement of trained teachers. Smartphones in schools have  proven to be a distraction to learning, yet fewer than a quarter of countries ban their use in schools.

Learning inequities between students widen when instruction is exclusively remote and when online content is not context appropriate. A study of open educational resource collections found that nearly 90% of higher education online repositories were created either in Europe or in North America; 92% of the material in the OER Commons global library is in English.

2. Is it equitable?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the rapid shift to online learning left out at least half a billion students worldwide, mostly affecting the poorest and those in rural areas. The report underlines that the right to education is increasingly synonymous with the right to meaningful connectivity, yet one in four primary schools do not even have electricity. It calls for all countries to set benchmarks for connecting schools to the internet between now and 2030 and for the focus to remain on the most marginalized.

Internet connectivity is highly unequal

 

Percentage of 3- to 17-year-olds with internet connection at home, by wealth quintile, selected countries, 2017–19
Source: UNICEF database.

3. Is it scalable?

Sound, rigorous and impartial evidence of technology’s added value in learning is needed more than ever, but is lacking. Most evidence comes from the United States, where the What Works Clearinghouse pointed out that less than 2% of education interventions assessed had ‘strong or moderate evidence of effectiveness’. When the evidence only comes from the technology companies themselves, there is a risk it may be biased.

Many countries ignore the long-term costs of technology purchases and the EdTech market is expanding while basic education needs remain unmet. The cost of moving to basic digital learning in low-income countries and of connecting all schools to the internet in lower-middle-income countries would add 50% to their current financing gap for achieving national SDG 4 targets. A full digital transformation of education with internet connectivity in schools and homes would cost over a billion per day just to operate.

4. Is it sustainable?

The fast pace of change in technology is putting strain on education systems to adapt. Digital literacy and critical thinking are increasingly important, particularly with the growth of generative AI. This adaptation movement has begun: 54% of countries have defined the skills they want to develop for the future. But only 11 out of 51 governments surveyed have curricula for AI.

In addition to these skills, basic literacy should not be overlooked, as it is critical for digital application too: students with better reading skills are far less likely to be duped by phishing emails.  Moreover, teachers also need appropriate training yet only half of countries currently have standards for developing their ICT skills. Few teacher training programmes cover cybersecurity even though 5% of ransomware attacks target education.

Sustainability also requires better guaranteeing the rights of technology users. Today, only 16% of countries guarantee data privacy in education by law. One analysis found that 89% of 163 education technology products could survey children. Further, 39 of 42 governments providing online education during the pandemic fostered uses that ‘risked or infringed’ on children’s rights.

It also requires ensuring that the long-term costs for our planet are taken into account. One estimate of the CO2 emissions that could be saved by extending the lifespan of all laptops in the European Union by a year found it would be equivalent to taking almost 1 million cars off the road.

The report calls for us to learn about our past mistakes when using technology in education so that we do not repeat them in the future. The #TechOnOurTerms campaign calls for decisions about technology in education to prioritize learner needs after assessing whether its application would be appropriate, equitable, evidence-based and sustainable. We need to teach children to live both with and without technology; to take what they need from the abundance of information, but to ignore what is not necessary; to let technology support, but never supplant human interactions in teaching and learning.

Read the report

How AI physics has the potential to revolutionise product design

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How AI physics has the potential to revolutionise product design

This article was published by the World Economic Forum on 26 June 2023.
Joris PoortFounder and Chief Executive Officer, Rescale

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT have become mainstream, but the use of AI in the product design process is less widely known.
  • Engineering and scientific computing are harnessing AI to define a new era of innovation across industries.
  • Computer simulations are increasingly using AI to understand how different product designs will perform.

 

The impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on digital services is quickly becoming apparent. Tools like ChatGPTBard, and GitHub Copilot are transforming how we work and live.

What is less known is the potential for AI to revolutionise the basic nature of research, engineering, and physical product design.

Engineering and scientific computing is now the foundation of innovation. These methods often require massive computing power from supercomputing clusters (also known as high-performance computing or HPC) to run detailed simulation models that replicate the real world.

Across industries, research and development (R&D) teams use digital simulations to explore the physical world effectively. Use cases vary from inventing life-saving medicine, improving aircraft design and pioneering sustainable energy to creating self-driving vehicles, and refining manufacturing processes, among many other possibilities.

Now, AI offers the potential to supercharge engineering and scientific computing and transform how organizations innovate.

Making R&D more efficient

The computer simulations used today for engineering and scientific computing are increasingly benefiting with additional assistance from AI (and in some cases replaced by AI), dramatically lowering costs and helping engineers find the best answers faster.

Running simulations can be expensive, often requiring supercomputers to crunch massive data sets and execute highly complex calculations. But if you can build a machine learning (ML) model on how the physics works, you don’t need to run simulations every time since your ML inference model can extrapolate the answer from the data.

This means you get the answers on how a particular design will perform faster and cheaper. Over the long term, machine learning, physics-informed neural networks, and other AI-based tools will become standard tools for all engineers and scientists to maximize productivity within R&D development.

The era of AI-assisted engineering

Organizations that become adept at creating well-crafted AI-physics models will gain a solid competitive advantage. Such capabilities will help them establish a fundamental physics understanding of how different product designs will perform in real life. This has huge implications for how organizations retain knowledge in their research and product development.

AI-physics models can capture best practices knowledge about how physical objects behave – information that traditionally has been in the head of an expert, such as a scientist, engineer, or designer.

An aircraft engineer, for example, has accumulated knowledge about the best design approaches for the shape of wings, which then informs their choices regarding the types of design options they explore with digital simulations.

But that kind of information can now be captured with AI, which can then come up with a shortlist of design suggestions that engineers can then further explore with digital simulations.

Critically, suppose a company can create an ML model of best practices for wing designs (by training the AI tool on its body of knowledge about airplane wings). In that case, it can retain that expertise, regardless of if an engineer leaves the company.

This also brings far greater agility to an organization. If a company wants to build a new kind of plane that is more stable in high winds, an ML application can quickly generate the best options for the shape of the wings, helping the organization rapidly spin up new prototypes to enter new markets.

AI will physically shape our world

Given AI’s ability to help us understand the physical world, we are likely to see new shapes in all types of products, from buildings and aircraft to furniture and automobiles. Such innovations are being driven by another variant of AI: generative design.

Generative design works much like generative AI for writing text. By providing some basic guidance (prompts) about what you are trying to design, generative design tools will output many possible options, some of which you would not have thought up on your own.

By letting the software decide the design based on your performance objectives, some fascinating possibilities can result. Generative design, for example, is creating prototypes with a very biological look.

Generative AI for product design evolution and optimization example of a load-bearing bracket. Source: Rescale.

Navigating the AI transition for science and engineering

Organizations that embrace AI will accelerate engineering and scientific discovery while developing innovative new solutions that would be computationally prohibitive using traditional approaches.

Despite the promise of AI, organizations across industries will need to establish engineering and research best practices to help ensure they navigate this transition safely to maximize the benefits to society without needless risk.

Most importantly, AI is only as good as the information it trains on. Organizations will still need to do much work to provide the essential information to make the AI tool smart in the right ways.

Also, legal issues for AI are still very much undefined. Organizations must carefully review the outputs of AI to ensure accuracy, as well as watching for any ethical red flags.

Security is also another important consideration to make sure AI practices don’t accidentally expose intellectual property or proprietary information.

Certainly, guardrails for how organizations use AI are essential as we work through the early days of this new technology. But with some thoughtful measures in place, AI can safely open up all new possibilities for research and development, helping organizations move faster, become more agile, and discover better ways to invent the future.

Supporting the adoption of AI physics will help us make better products faster, accelerate the R&D innovation process, and explore the boundaries of knowledge to develop new engineering breakthroughs and scientific discoveries.

Autodesk boss urges contractors to keep up with new tech

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A New Civil Engineer’s Innovative Thinker informs that Autodesk boss urges contractors to keep up with new tech.  Let us see.

The image above is of Autodesk Blog

 


Innovative Thinker | Autodesk boss urges contractors to keep up with new tech

Contractors must keep up with technological advances to drive the industry forward, says Autodesk senior vice chairman Jim Lynch.

Globally, the built environment footprint is expected to double in size by 2060. For that to happen in line with net zero targets, technology is going to be critical to improving the way construction is carried out.

Jim Lynch, Vice President & General Manager, Autodesk Construction Solutions.

Autodesk senior vice chairman Jim Lynch puts it simply: “The industry has to find a better way to build and digital is going to play – and is already playing – a huge role in that.”

For technology to advance our construction techniques, digital literacy is going to be required in all practices and, ideally, through all phases of construction.

“The bare minimum is that contractors use digital technology on the job site for collaboration,” says Lynch.

“Ideally, they should use digital technology during the pre-construction process. Moving on from there they should use it to drive operations and maintenance, then take that project information from design out to a digital twin, where they can use that technology to provide management capabilities for the owner.”

To make this a reality, technology must be easy to deploy and adopt, according to Lynch. “If using and deploying technology is going to need weeks of training where you’re taking workers off the job, that’s not going to work,” he explains.

However, Lynch believes the onus is on contractors to invest more in improving their digital literacy if they are falling behind.

“You have to build up that digital muscle,” he says. “And I think, by and large, contractors really do understand that they have to take those first steps around collaboration, then extend those steps into using more digital during the planning process and then continue on from there.”

He believes that today’s contractors are embracing technology faster than ever, not only because of the competition, but also because of the expectations of clients and the government. He points to the UK’s Building Safety Act, which became law in April 2022, as a driver.

“That is really all about data; it is ensuring that owners, contractors and designers all play a role in making sure that digital information is created, captured and stored throughout the entire process.”

Lynch believes a big challenge is going to be attracting the workforce to build all the future projects – but that digital could play a part in drawing people in. “I think the use of digital technologies to drive better outcomes in construction will be intriguing to the younger generation,” he says.

“How to apply technology to the construction process, especially when you think about augmented reality and virtual reality applications, will drive a greater interest in the workforce.”

He adds that the industry has made great progress in its use of technology in recent decades. “But I think we’ve only scratched the surface,” he says. “I think the best is really yet to come.”

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3rd MENA Innovation and Technology Transfer Summit

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The participants in the one-day summit will include R&D institutions, technology transfer experts, global investors, government and private sector representatives, entrepreneurs and academics and other stakeholders, presenting an immersive experience of knowledge sharing, business showcasing and networking in an intimate setting.

The summit comes at a time when the world is witnessing the fourth industrial revolution characterized by the penetration of emerging technology in a number of fields, including robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, biotechnology, the Internet of Things (IoT), 3D printing, and autonomous vehicles.

Hussain Al Mahmoudi, CEO of the Sharjah Research, Technology and Innovation Park, said: “The MITT Summit 2022 assumes huge significance as the Middle East has become the world’s fastest growing market in business and technology transfer. As proven globally, the knowledge and technology transfer model has been responsible for rapid advancements in every field. By bringing together global experts and highlighting the role of academic institutions in R&D, the MITT Summit serves as a perfect platform for ramping up technology transfer trends in the region.”

The summit will discuss patterns of technology transfer in the Middle East and North Africa region, existing opportunities as well as challenges, and tips on how to achieve set goals and use knowledge sharing to boost the region’s economic growth and long-term stability.

Technology transfer has been the main driver of global economic growth over the last 40 years. Companies are increasingly relying on open innovation to develop intellectual property (IP) more quickly and economically, to stay ahead of competition. Universities, research organisations, and SMEs play a crucial role in supplying intellectual property, and supporting research that will build the innovations of tomorrow.

Many countries around the world have passed their own national legislations and policies to spur innovation. The UAE issued its own National Innovation Strategy in 2014, which seeks to make the country the region’s top innovation hub by developing the right regulatory framework, infrastructure, and ensuring availability of investment.

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