In mid-April this year, Microsoft announced it would invest $1.5 billion in G42, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) company in the UAE.
This deal is just one small part of the UAE's mission to become a world leader in the field of AI. As the world has seen in recent years, the country has made every effort to use AI technology to help drive its economy without relying on oil.
The country is an early mover in the AI industry. The UAE created the world's first AI minister in 2017, and appointed 27-year-old Omar bin Sultan al-Olama AI minister. he accepted the task of turning the UAE into an AI powerhouse by 2031.
In a speech in Abu Dhabi in September 2023, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said the UAE “has been talking about AI since it was cool.”
Global Ambition in AI Technology
Apart from Altman, several Silicon Valley tech bigwigs betting on AI also recently visited the UAE. These include Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, and xAI's Elon Musk.
“I hope the region can play an important role in this global conversation,” Altman told participants during his visit in September. Acknowledging the government's efforts to promote this technology, he said the country could serve as the world's “regulatory sandbox” for testing innovative AI technologies.
A few months after his visit, OpenAI announced a partnership with G42.
Since its founding in 2018, G42 has partnered with major technology companies, many of which are related to AI. In addition to OpenAI and Microsoft, G42 has collaborated with IBM, Nvidia, Oracle, Dell, and Cerebras. The $100 million deal with Cerebras, signed in 2023, aims to build what the company claims is “the world's largest supercomputer for AI training.”
AI Ecosystem
Another important component in the UAE's AI ambitions is the establishment of AI investment firm MGX. The company was founded in March 2024. The company was formed by the Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Technology Council (AIATC), which was founded just a few months earlier — in January 2024, to be precise.
MGX's mandate is to enable the advancement and application of cutting-edge technologies that will improve the lives of current and future generations. Unsurprisingly, one of the key areas MGX focuses on is AI development and adoption. Mubadala, one of the largest sovereign funds in the UAE, and G42 have been appointed as underlying partners of MGX.
“Our sole focus [with MGX] is to accelerate the responsible and inclusive development of AI for the benefit of humanity, guided by Abu Dhabi's global investment strategy for AI,” said Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, deputy ruler of Abu Dhabi and chairman of AIATC. in a statement.
As it signed multi-billion dollar deals, the UAE has also created ripples in the AI world on the software front.
Simply put, LLMs are machine learning models that can comprehend and generate human language text. They form the backbone of AI tools like ChatGPT. Falcon was released under an open-source license.
By some accounts, the Falcon LLM was the best open-source LLM available in the world upon its release. It even outperformed offerings from Meta and Google. Its release announced the arrival of the UAE in the AI scene.
To further demonstrate its intent, ATRC earmarked $300 million in February 2024 to create the Falcon Foundation. The nonprofit body will oversee the development of open-source generative AI models based on Falcon.
One of Falcon's open source goals is to make it available to researchers around the world, helping the country attract the best talent.
According to estimates, there has been a large influx of tech workers in the UAE since 2021. As of September 2023, around 120,000 people were working in the AI field in the UAE. This number is much different from the figure of 30,000 in the previous two years. TII itself has a staff of around 800 people from 74 countries.
And things will get better. According to Microsoft, one of the goals of its partnership with G42 is to cultivate “a skilled and diverse AI workforce and talent pool.” To achieve that goal, the companies are raising $1 billion in development funding for developers.
“With AI, we can't be reactive. We have to be proactive,” al-Olama said in a recent interview. “That's the goal of government: to be proactive and do something today.”
ref : economymiddleeast.com