Saudi Arabia sent the first biological samples of its kind in the Middle East to the International Space Station, within the framework of the Biogravity 1 mission within “SpaceX CRS-35”, with support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The launch came from the Saudi Space Agency and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) as part of a long-term research program aimed at supporting scientific efforts to combat Alzheimer’s diseases and multiple sclerosis, through a series of 3 sequential missions.
This scientific achievement strengthens Saudi Arabia’s presence in microgravity research, and expands the use of space science and technology in the service of health and vital research.
The mission represents the first phase of the program by sending reference human samples from healthy donors into space. To establish a scientific basis for comparison in later stages, and to take advantage of the unique characteristics of the microgravity environment in studying cellular changes associated with aging and neurodegenerative diseases.
It includes two biological experiments developed by KAUST, called SSA-1 and SSA-2. The program is implemented within an international scientific partnership that brings together the US National Stem Cell Foundation (NSCF) with support from NASA and Axiom Space, in addition to national scientific participation from the agency and KAUST, which enhances the integration of local capabilities with the global research system.
For her part, Saudi astronaut Rayana Barnawi, general supervisor of microgravity research at the agency, said that the launch of these samples “represents an important scientific step in the process of employing the space environment to serve human health, and reflects the development of national capabilities and their readiness to participate in advanced research and through the biogravity program.”
Bernawi added: “We seek to transform the knowledge gained in orbit into research opportunities that contribute to deepening the understanding of diseases and supporting the development of future treatment solutions.”
In turn, Professor Imad Ghalouzi, professor of biological sciences at KAUST, the lead scientist for the project, confirmed that the mission allows researchers to test disease models in an environment that cannot be simulated on Earth, and enhances the university’s contribution to discoveries that serve patients in the Kingdom and the world.
In addition, Dr. Pinar Messi, Scientific Advisor to the Foundation and Global Head of Biomanufacturing and Biotechnology at Axiom Space, expressed her enthusiasm for this mission, which included samples from Saudi Arabia.
Missy explained that the foundation’s team “will test, for the first time in a microgravity environment, the concept of a ‘cell village’. The concept of merging several individual cell lines within a single organelle allows for studies to be conducted at the level of population groups, with the possibility of implementing what can be described as (clinical experiments in a laboratory dish).”
The program extends across three interconnected research missions, starting with studying healthy reference samples, then studying models derived from patients with Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis, all the way to studying therapeutic response and exploring potential drug targets in a microgravity environment.
The “Biogravity” program comes within the agency’s efforts to build national capabilities in microgravity and life sciences research, expand international scientific partnerships, and employ space science and technology to serve human health, which contributes to enhancing the knowledge economy, innovation, and quality of life, in line with the goals of “Saudi Vision 2030.”
Like Camille, the architect for whom artificial intelligence saves “enormous time,” a large number of French employees are turning to this tool without the consent of their employers, as they come up with their own solutions in response to the old and slow methods that their companies still rely on, and their failure to adopt new technologies.
Sophie (a pseudonym), a 38-year-old property manager, manages 500 properties and has to deal with emergencies, as well as “hundreds of backlogged emails.” She describes the amount of work as “enormous,” noting that the pressure of those responsible makes the situation worse.
Sophie considers that the tools used within her company have become “obsolete,” and that her managers are failing to keep pace with development. She continues: “Companies do not provide the necessary tools to facilitate work, which causes great frustration for employees.”
This prompted the thirty-year-old employee to subscribe, at her own expense, to the services of the artificial intelligence model “Cloud” from “Anthropic”, and use it to formulate responses to landlords and tenants.
She told Agence France-Presse: “I have to check the legal points to make sure there are no errors, but it saves me a tremendous amount of time.” "It's like entrusting someone else to do a job that takes a long time."
This type of use is known as “Shadow AI,” that is, when employees resort to this tool without supervision from the company.
Jerome Bellois, an expert in information security at the consulting company Wavestone, confirms that this phenomenon has become “to a large extent widespread” in all public and private sectors alike.
Belloa explains that “the tools that institutions propose to start using are subject to specific regulatory restrictions and budgets, and are not always as efficient as those available abroad for a few tens of euros.”
He continues: “By the time these companies find models that are consistent with their internal policies,” those tools will already have become “obsolete” compared to those available abroad to everyone, especially given the “insane speed” with which artificial intelligence is developing.
According to the Work Trend Index issued by Microsoft LinkedIn, 75 percent of employees around the world were using artificial intelligence at work in 2024, and 78 percent of them were using their own tools.
Camille says that even though she reviews, verifies and adjusts the results, the AI has already done 80 to 90 percent of the work. She continues: “My bosses did not want to pay attention to this issue. So I did what I could” using common tools available to everyone.
“In secret”
“The lack of tools or guidance on the part of companies encourages these practices,” explains Cécile Dujou, director of the Observatory for Management Transitions and Human Resources at the National Institute of Arts and Professions.
She points out that some companies prohibit their employees from using artificial intelligence, but they nevertheless resort to it to speed up work and gain more time.
While other companies are busy “formulating” a specific framework for the use of this technology that includes ethical standards, necessary tools and specific areas of use, employees have already begun using their own models “in secret,” revealing the gap between defining the rules and experimenting on the ground.
Dojo continues that once employees notice the benefits of these tools, they become “kind of addicted to them,” and the tools that companies subsequently provide are unable to compete with those they are already using.
However, the aforementioned phenomenon raises privacy concerns, amid the possibility of confidential company data being leaked, according to Jerome Bellois.
Shehrazad Aboub, a lawyer specializing in data law, confirms that with regard to sending data to artificial intelligence, we must “deal with it as if we were on the ground.”
She adds: “We cannot share data that includes company secrets, how it works, or personal information.”
However, Camille reduces these concerns, as she considers that the tools used daily do not guarantee the confidentiality of information at all, starting from “email messages to the Teams platform.”
She adds that employers underestimate the importance of introducing artificial intelligence into daily work, and the “excess workload” that employees suffer from.
To prevent employees from continuing to use it secretly, Cécile Dugo believes that company officials must “develop a road map,” according to which they define the needs, the necessary tools, and the framework within which they can be used within the company.
A 41-year-old communications official, who preferred to remain anonymous, says: “No one in the office acknowledges this publicly, but everyone does!” Who among us does not use GPT chat? The mere thought of banning it is absurd.”
Google launched the Gemini 4 Argon model globally for developers and companies via the Gemini API, and also made it available to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers through Gemini, Google Antigravity, and AI Mode in the search engine. The company says the model was designed to handle complex, multi-step tasks in areas including programming, finance, law, cybersecurity, and science, and that it achieved advanced results in a number of evaluation tests across these areas.
According to Google, Argon ranked first on the Vals Index, which measures the performance of models in sectors including finance, programming, tax, and law. The model is available at an introductory price of $2 per million input codes and $10 per million output codes, with a 95 percent discount on cached input codes.
Increased productivity of programming teams
Among the most prominent applications presented by Google is the use of the model within its engineering teams. The company says that Argonne, through Antigravity, has helped increase agent-based code transmissions by more than 35 percent, while reducing code rollbacks by about a third.
In another example, the Chrome team used the model to help separate basic web page functionality from an old folder containing about 6 million lines of code within the Chromium database, which is about 40 million lines in size. According to the company, the model contributed to completing work that was expected to take months within weeks.
Applications in business and research
During the early access phase, companies including Deloitte, LexisNexis, Amcbeans Healthcare, and Isomorphic Labs used the model for tasks including in-depth research, gathering information from documents, analyzing long-term data, and reasoning across large codebases.
Google says that Argonne combines reasoning capabilities, visual understanding, expanded knowledge, and writing in multiple fields, with a focus on accuracy in complex tasks. The company also indicated that the model is being used to discover critical security vulnerabilities and proactively address them, within the range of uses that its teams and customers participating in early access are testing.
Applications in science
The use of “Argon” also extends to scientific research projects. Google says the model helped raise the productivity of quantum error correction in the AlphaQubit project to nearly double. She also pointed out its use in arriving at new mathematical solutions related to nuclear fusion research in cooperation with a professor at the University of Maryland, in addition to applications in life sciences and other research fields.
Abilities in robotics and spatial understanding
In the field of robotics, Google says that the model focuses on understanding three-dimensional spaces and visual concepts within applications related to physical artificial intelligence. Argonne scored 87 percent on the “Embodied Reasoning - ERQA” scale, which measures reasoning abilities related to visual and spatial understanding. According to the company, these capabilities rely on a combination of mathematical and logical reasoning and visual understanding, in addition to other uses of the model in programming, analysis, and scientific research.
