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The latest head of Saudi Arabia's top academic institution has vowed to stop any cooperation with China in artificial intelligence that would threaten the university's access to US-made chips.
Professor Sir Edward Byrne, who became head of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Kaust) in Saudi Arabia last month, said he would give attention to relations with “the areas I do know best, namely the UK, Europe and the USA”, and be sure that Kaust researchers have access to the AI technology they need for his or her work.
“You know the more sensitive areas. I feel everyone knows what they’re. “I’m absolutely committed to completely complying with all relevant national regulations, including those referring to the US,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times.
He continued: “US collaborations are critical. As President, I actually have an absolute commitment to complying with all U.S. trade regulations to enable this cooperation to proceed. I still see room for cooperation with China in lots of areas. But not in areas where the US government has very strict guidelines for access to US technology.”
The US has tightened controls on export licenses for its cutting-edge AI chips to forestall the technology from reaching China. There at the moment are fears throughout the Middle East that the region can even be affected by export controls.
Microsoft, which has invested $1.5 billion in G42, the most important AI company within the United Arab Emirates, said last month that it needed more “clarity and consistency” about when AI chips can be delivered to the region could be.
Byrne's predecessor Tony Chan, who has since left Kaust, expanded cooperation with China, and there have been particular concerns a few joint AI project with the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and the Shenzhen Research Institute of Big Data to determine an Arabic-language focused large language model called AceGPT.
There were fears inside Kaust, which was founded in 2009 with a $10 billion endowment from the late King Abdullah to change into the country's first graduate research university, that the depth of collaboration could prompt the U.S. to shut the institute from obtaining this data for the most recent chips for its computers.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are racing to develop AI and expand their trade ties with each the U.S. and China without angering Washington, their top security partner. In May, a Saudi fund became the one foreign investor in China's best-known generative AI startup.
Senior Saudi officials are actively working to secure access to US-made advanced AI chips, particularly from Nvidia. Technology Minister Abdullah Alswaha has made several trips to the United States in recent months to talk together with his American counterparts and technology executives in Silicon Valley.
The kingdom hosted a serious AI conference in Riyadh last month, where the Saudi state data and artificial intelligence authority unveiled a large-language Arabic model and announced a take care of Nvidia for five,000 GPUs. An official told the FT that SDAIA already had access to 1,000 GPUs from the US company and that they were optimistic about having access to more within the near future.
