https://arab.news/z5rjp
DUBAI: Saudi Arabia ranked first globally in artificial intelligence security, privacy, and cryptography, as well as women’s empowerment in AI, according to the 2026 AI Index Report by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.
The Kingdom leads the world in female representation among AI inventors and authors at 32.3 percent, ahead of Australia at 30.1 percent and Canada at 29.6 percent — a notable figure given the persistent gender gaps across the AI field.
AI inventors and authors are distributed across a range of specializations globally. The most common fields are healthcare and bioinformatics, computer vision and image processing, and software engineering, accounting for 10 percent or more of inventors in several countries.
Saudi Arabia has the highest share of AI inventors working in security, privacy and cryptography at 15 percent, followed by India at 13 percent and the UAE at 12 percent.
The Kingdom is also among a small group of countries with a positive net flow of AI talent, a measure the report defines as the difference between the number of AI authors and inventors arriving in and departing from a country.
Saudi Arabia recorded the fastest growth in its share of AI talent globally, rising more than 100 percent between 2019 and 2025.
Employees in emerging economies remain the most active users of AI in the workplace. More than 80 percent of respondents in Saudi Arabia, India and the UAE said they regularly use AI at work, with trust levels in those countries similarly elevated.
That contrasts sharply with North America and Europe, where only around half of employees report using AI tools regularly and trust levels fall between 40 and 48 percent.
Generative AI adoption among university students in the Kingdom also ranked among the highest globally at 89 percent, compared to 67 percent in the United States and the United Kingdom.
The report underpins Saudi Arabia’s efforts in expanding its AI ecosystem, highlighting initiatives such as the $5 billion investment by Amazon Web Services and HUMAIN to develop an “AI Zone” in the Kingdom.