Prime Highlights
- Abu Dhabi and Washington announced a multibillion-dollar AI campus, set to be the world’s largest outside the U.S.
- The flagship project, Stargate UAE, will feature a 1 GW AI supercomputing cluster within a 5 GW data hub.
Key Facts
- The Mohamed bin Zayed University of AI (MBZUAI) has opened a research lab in Silicon Valley to develop large language models.
- Technology Innovation Institute (TII) has launched Falcon AI as open-source and introduced Falcon Arabic for regional users.
Background
The United Arab Emirates is quickly becoming a leading player in the global contest of artificial intelligence dominance, as it dramatically increases domestic investments and collaborates with international organizations to enhance its impact on the global context as the US-China rivalry escalates. A multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence campus, announced jointly by Abu Dhabi and Washington in May, is positioned to become the biggest AI hub beyond U.S. borders. At its center will be Stargate UAE, a 1-gigawatt AI cluster forming part of a broader 5 GW data center hub. The initiative is led by an Emirati company, G42, which is supported by OpenAI, NVIDIA, Oracle, Cisco, and SoftBank. The agreement also incorporates the provision of ChatGPT Plus subscriptions to all residents of the UAE, the first in the world. The interests of the UAE are wide, including education and innovation. By expanding its international presence, the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence has now also opened a research center in Silicon Valley that works on big language models. TII has open-sourced Falcon AI at home and released Falcon Arabic, a state-of-the-art tool tuned to regional tasks.
According to analysts, this effort underscores the UAE’s ambition to shift its economy away from oil dependence and establish a prominent role in technology and international diplomacy. Being incorporated into AI supply chains, the UAE will increase its soft power capabilities, which will make it an appealing resource to governments and companies. However, rights groups have warned that the country’s history of domestic surveillance and regional military involvement raises concerns about how these technologies might be used. Washington has already paused a planned transfer of NVIDIA chips to ensure they do not reach China. Observers say that just as oil once defined the UAE’s global standing, artificial intelligence is becoming its next strategic asset.
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