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The United Arab Emirates is in search of a “marriage” with the United States in the sector of artificial intelligence. The Gulf state hopes to make use of its petrochemical wealth to grow to be a world superpower in the event of this cutting-edge technology.
UAE AI Minister Omar Sultan Al Olama told the Financial Times that a recent take care of Microsoft to amass a $1.5 billion stake in Abu Dhabi's industrial AI champion G42 was just the start of stronger technology collaboration between the 2 countries.
The deal, which got here after months of negotiations between U.S. and Emirati officials, resulted in G42's commitment to divest Chinese systems because the U.S. seeks to keep up its dominance within the AI field.
“Now you will notice the outcomes of this – if I’ll use this word – connection between G42 and Microsoft, but additionally the UAE and the United States,” Al Olama said. “When you take a look at the cutting-edge technology, the newest, it needs to be done in coordination with the US actors and assurances need to be given to the US.”
Fueled by around $2 trillion in sovereign wealth funds, the UAE's AI ambitions have come into sharper focus this 12 months because the country seeks to cut back its economic dependence on fossil fuels by, amongst other things, positioning itself as a world AI hub.
Abu Dhabi has founded the investment vehicle MGX, which is valued at several billion dollars. Its chairman is the powerful UAE national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan.
As the Financial Times reported, MGX was in talks with San Francisco-based OpenAI about its chip development plans, and Sheikh Tahnoon led talks between the United Arab Emirates and the United States on AI.
The UAE is constructing AI capabilities in key sectors from healthcare to defense, convinced that AI may also help its largest firms grow to be more efficient. Abu Dhabi's national oil company said the usage of AI tools resulted in $500 million in cost savings last 12 months by increasing production capability and streamlining operations.
The UAE faces fierce global competition, with the US and China battling for technological leadership in artificial intelligence, while start-ups within the UK, France and across Asia are attracting billions in investment from international investors.
But the UAE's advantage is that it might offer unparalleled access to capital. The expectation that Abu Dhabi will invest heavily in AI projects abroad has also attracted industry leaders to the country in recent months, from OpenAI's Sam Altman to Nvidia's Jensen Huang.
The United Arab Emirates has been stockpiling chips needed to power large language models. Al Olama estimates that the country has amassed a backlog that might cover the country's needs for 2 years. However, in response to Bloomberg, US authorities are also attempting to slow the provision of some AI chips to the Middle East, including the United Arab Emirates.
Some observers fear that the autocratic UAE could have access to advanced AI technology.
Marietje Schaake, a fellow for international policy at Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, said U.S. policy on artificial intelligence has thus far been pragmatic and closely focused on fighting China.
“The exclusive give attention to China signifies that other countries can claim to be a part of a like-minded coalition, while the US government, within the meantime, is completely satisfied to show a blind eye to its human rights violations,” said the previous member of the European Parliament.
This month, Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Research Council released its latest large-scale language model, Falcon 2, which it says has been judged by external reviewers to be as capable as or higher than competing LLMs from Meta and Google.
ATRC has also launched a industrial AI company, AI71, to construct models based on data from the UAE's health authorities and justice system.
The government data gave the UAE a “very big, decisive advantage on this game where there are only a few players who’ve plenty of protected data,” said Faisal Al Bannai, secretary general of the ATRC.
In 2019, Abu Dhabi also opened the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, the world's first university dedicated exclusively to AI.
The institute has helped to construct an influx of talent within the UAE, a serious challenge for the country of just 10 million people, most of whom are expats. Although a fifth of the university's graduates are from the UAE, 22.5 percent are from China, said university rector Tim Baldwin.
While Abu Dhabi focuses on the event of AI technologies, the neighboring emirate of Dubai also desires to apply them.
Dubai plans to extend the capability of its data centers to host the cloud computing required for artificial intelligence and needs to advertise AI business clusters around established industries similar to finance.
“There is a belief in any respect levels of leadership within the UAE that we’ll give attention to AI as a technology,” said Al Olama. “The decisions we make today (…) will shape the UAE for future generations.”
