The UAE is considering partnerships with several countries, including India, to give a boost to its AI development plans.
Hakim Hacidexecutive director and acting chief researcher at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) which established the UAE’s Falcon LLM, said India is a neighboring country, with several immigrants constituting a significant part of the workforce. work of the country.
“We have launched (efforts) internally to (achieve) multilingualism and Urdu integration because we have a lot of immigrants in the UAE who come from India. Urdu language is as important as Arabic in the UAE,” he said.
The country will likely collaborate with India-based companies working on a multilingual model, such as Hanooman by BharatGPT.
Likewise, last week it was reported that Microsoft had invested $1.5 billion in UAE-based AI company G42, with Microsoft President Brad Smith joining the company’s board of directors. Shortly after this development, sources within the American government stated that several more partnerships were being developed between the two countries.
Specifically, it was reported that the US government was behind the Microsoft-G42 deal and was working to forge partnerships between the UAE and major industry players like Google and OpenAI.
This would explain why both OpenAI Sam Altman and that of Nvidia Jensen Huang were seen rubbing shoulders with the country’s AI stalwarts.
However, these partnerships are not the result of chance. The partnerships with the United States and potentially India follow the UAE’s severing of ties with China in terms of AI development.
Was China behind all this?
Initial of United Arab Emirates AI-driven partnerships were forged with China, where G42 had collaborated with Huawei for the use of their equipment to help with the deployment of 5G as well as for cloud capabilities. However, this collaboration as well as several collaborations between the two countries remained a subject of concern for the States.
With Washington Raising concerns about their partnerships and China’s potential use of data from an American ally, the G42 broke off their partnership in favor of American partnerships.
Late last year, the G42 also promised that ties with its Chinese counterparts would be severed. “For better or worse, as a business we are in a position where we have to make a choice. We cannot work with both parties,” said Peng XiaoCEO of G42.
With ties severed, it appears the UAE is interested in partnering with the United States as well as its allies to improve its AI capabilities and infrastructure.
“These negotiations are part of Washington’s efforts to gain supremacy over Beijing in the development of artificial intelligence and other sensitive technologies,” the Financial Times recently reported. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimonda was heavily involved in the Microsoft-G42 deal, according to the report.
Similarly, according to the FT, sources who had been briefed on the negotiations between the two governments on the deal had said: “The UAE sees data as the new oil. She realized she had to find a new way to exist between the United States and China because of American concerns about Chinese technology. Since then, they have had very productive conversations, notably with Raimondo.
In addition to current collaborations and investments from US-based companies like OpenAI and Microsoft, the Gulf country has also expressed interest in collaborating with other US allies.
Inbound and outbound investments
If the absence of Chinese intervention has pushed the United Arab Emirates to want to establish collaborations with other countries, the same goes in the other direction.
As Altmann recently said: “For many reasons, the UAE would be well-positioned to be a leader in discussions around this,” which specifically related to the creation of an oversight organization to monitor AI systems, on the model of the International Atomic Energy Agency. .
In December last year, the UAE and India signed a memorandum of understanding for joint research in several areas, including artificial intelligence. At the same time, the UK has made it clear that an AI partnership with the UAE is at the top of its priorities.
In February, the British Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Michelle Donelan visited the UAE to get a broader sense of the country’s AI situation and to forge partnerships with them. “We will learn from each other as we chart a path forward in this area,” she said.
Likewise, the UAE has also been proactive about who it wants to invest in, with reports that officials have reached out to startups based in Europe.
“We’ve already been approached by people outside the European Union who are basically asking, ‘Oh, now with all this horrible regulation, don’t you want to move your AI R&D company?’ ” “, said Jonas Andrulisthe founder of the German company Aleph Alpha.
Ease of access to the United Arab Emirates
The UAE’s Prime Minister of AI, Omar Al Olama, has played a key role in leading the way to ensure that AI development continues unhindered in the country. Olama had supported Altman’s suggestion to turn the UAE into a “sandbox” for AI.
Similarly, the UAE prides itself on providing access to data that would otherwise not be available to businesses in other countries.
Secretary General of the UAE Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC) Faisal Al Bannai said that currently the country offers a good mix of data access, research funding and infrastructure, making it a goldmine for researchers.
The country, for example, has had no qualms about allowing companies to train on private data, such as patient medical data, but stripped of any identifying information.
“It’s a heavenly place for AI researchers. There aren’t many places that bring all of this together under one roof. Try going to some countries and accessing the data to practice. OK, good luck,” he said. Bloomberg.
With a government staffed by more open-minded and AI-inclined civil servants, it appears the country is much more willing to allow experimentation and embrace its role as an AI sandbox. This means that the UAE is taking full advantage of the widening gap with its counterparts.
As Al Bannai said: “You can either debate forever or you can move. We decided to move. »
