His Excellency the Chairman of the Board of Directors of King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Engineer Abdullah bin Amer Al-Swaha, announced today the launch of the Fourth Industrial Revolution Center in partnership with the World Economic Forum (WEF), on the sidelines of the first Saudi Forum for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, organized by the city at its headquarters with the participation of Professor Klaus Schwab, founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum, and a number of their highnesses, ministers, officials, and local and international speakers.
The launch of the center comes in partnership with the World Economic Forum within the support and enablement that this forum is an opportunity to combine talents and technology to provide regulations that stimulate innovation. This forum is an opportunity to combine talent and technology to deliver innovation-driven organizations, stressing the importance of bringing together thinkers and actors such as governments, business and non-governmental organizations to support this organizational thinking.
Engineer Al-Swaha explained that flexibility and speed in policy and regulation is a key element to move forward in the 21st century, citing the Kingdom's experience in the “The Line” project in Neom announced by His Highness the Crown Prince, which harnesses data and artificial intelligence to create a hassle-free experience while preserving the environment, considering that what is happening in Neom today is the largest innovation platform for planning urban models and future cities for the next 150 years.For his part, Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Chairman of the World Economic Forum, congratulated the Kingdom on its launch of the Fourth Industrial Revolution Center, which aims to harness new technologies with the best principles of flexible governance, which needs the government, business sector and civil society together to make technology a force for good and ensure that society benefits from it.

In turn, H.E. Dr. Mounir bin Mahmoud Al Dessouki, President of KACST, explained that our country needs cooperation and coordination of efforts in the public, private and non-profit sectors and open dialogue channels to raise awareness about the fourth industry, and identify the outputs The Kingdom has a solid economic base to build on, through recent reforms to the governance model and the establishment of new entities such as the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority: Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority, Cybersecurity Authority, Digital Government Authority, and Research, Development and Innovation Development Authority.