King Khalid University’s Center for Artificial Intelligence harnesses the power of machine learning to create applications that offer practical solutions
From detecting cancer to supporting student success, researchers at King Khalid University are using artificial intelligence (AI) to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing the modern world.
The Center for Artificial Intelligence aims to develop intelligent applications using machine learning, big data and the Internet of Things to solve real-world problems.
Since its inception in 2019, the centre has made it its mission to support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Saudi Vision 2030 strategy.
“We try to improve quality of life, while empowering and enabling mankind via innovative artificial intelligence solutions,” says director Dr Salem Alelyani.
“Artificial intelligence has become part of our daily lives, even if we don’t recognise it. We are not talking about an emerging technology that will be here in the next 10 years – it’s already started. We consider artificial intelligence an extension to us, not a competitor to us.”
In seeking to harness the positive potential of AI, the centre conducts research in various disciplines. One of the biggest focus areas is healthcare. The centre’s flagship research project is an application that enables the detection of oral cancer using a smartphone camera. The centre also works on projects focused on detection of intellectual and developmental disabilities and brain tumours.
Education and energy are other areas of interest. In education, researchers have been examining how chatbots can provide support and guidance to struggling students and how King Khalid University’s online learning management platform can be used to predict future student success.
In energy, the centre is using insight from AI models to predict power generation from solar panels.
“Saudi Arabia is one of the major players in oil and gas and it is planning to be one of the key players in renewable energy in the future,” says Dr Alelyani.
“We started a project to predict the generated power for residential buildings using a photovoltaic [PV] system. And we are now working with the largest renewable energy solar PV system installed in Saudi Arabia, with more than one million solar panels.”
As well as exploring practical applications through machine-learning models such as deep learning, the centre builds and customises its own algorithms and investigates theoretical aspects of AI.
“Nowadays, most of the big companies are using machine-learning algorithms, even if they are not clearly saying they are using machine-learning algorithms,” says Dr Alelyani. “We are trying to detect and evaluate the bias in machine learning and make unbiased and fair machine-learning algorithms.”
The centre collaborates with partners both in and outside the university. For example, it is working with linguistics experts from the department of Arabic language on a natural language processing project to identify Saudi dialects in Twitter data.
External partners include Asir Central Hospital, the largest hospital in the southern region of Saudi Arabia, and universities in the UK, India, Malaysia and Pakistan.
“We are trying to build an ecosystem of research that will lead to applications that help people in the future,” says Dr Alelyani.
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