The International Monetary Fund released recently the 2023 Artificial Intelligence Preparedness Index (AIPT) where it assessed AI readiness across 174 countries around the globe. In details, the index score is based on the simple average of four key dimensions being digital infrastructure, human capital, technological innovation, and legal frameworks given their impact on smoothing the artificial intelligence adoption process. Countries are assigned scores ranging between 0 and 1, with a higher score indicating that a country is better braced for AI adoption.

North America was identified as the best AI preparedness region with a score of 0.74, followed by Europe (0.63), Asia and Pacific (0.52), with the Sub-Saharan Africa region faring worst with a score of 0.34. On a country level, Singapore ranked first globally with a score of 0.80, followed by Denmark (score of 0.78), the United States (0.77), the Netherlands (0.77) and Australia (0.76).

On a regional level, the United Arab Emirates emerges as the best performing country, ranking 36^th in the world with a score of 0.63, followed by Saudi Arabia (ranked 45^th with a score of 0.58) and Turkey (ranked 50^th with a score of 0.54). On the other end of the list came each of Syria (rank: 150; score: 0.30), Iraq (rank: 157; score: 0.27) and Libya (rank: 166; score: 0.24).

Locally, Lebanon came in 105^th in the world and 11^th in the region in the AI Preparedness Index with a score of 0.42, trailing Morocco (96^th with a score of 0.43) and pipping each of Egypt (110^th with score of 0.39), Iran (115^th with a score of 0.38), Algeria (119^th with a score of 0.37) and each of Syria, Iraq & Libya.