ADNOC Distribution, the company’s retail arm has opened ADNOC Oasis outlet,
a fully autonomous shop in the UAE, as the beginning of its rollout of AI-powered stores. Customers can buy goods without using a scanner or interacting with a cashier, and they can pay by tap, either with a bank card, doing a QR code scan, or by using their Emirates ID.
KPMG’s Pulse of Fintech’s report shows aggressive growth in EMEA thanks in large part to the UAE government’s efforts to foster digital transformation and the launch of the Dubai Digital Authority (DDA). According to GoFinance, the digital finance and insurance marketplace, expectations are that Fintech will continue to scale and accelerate.
If robots wrote the news, would they write about other robots? I ask because there’s been a suspicious burst of items about AI-powered writing tools, just when live journalists might have set things on autopilot so they could sneak out early for the holiday. Top of the list: writing-suggestion platform Grammarly just raised $200 million at a $13 billion valuation, doubling total funding to $400 million.
Do you miss those innocent days when every product announcement breathlessly reported the new system or feature was “AI-based”? If so, here’s a whiff of remembrance from AI infrastructure provider SambaNova Systems, who found that 78% of large companies rate AI and Machine Learning as important revenue drivers. Yet even they have a curiously mixed attitude, citing (in their press release) a NewVantage Partners study that found only a quarter of top companies have scaled AI/ML across their organization.