That's ambitious.
From Bloomberg, May 22:
Mohamed bin Zayed University of AI is focused on building an engineering pipeline, incubating homegrown startups, and hypercharging the region’s AI development
A few weeks before Donald Trump announced plans to lift semiconductor restrictions on the United Arab Emirates, a move with the potential to supercharge the region’s AI development, Eric Xing sat in his office in Abu Dhabi and discussed what the future might look like.
Xing, a computer scientist who previously taught at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon, is president of Mohamed bin Zayed University of AI, a six-year-old institution uniquely positioned to shape the coming AI boom. During an interview with Bloomberg, Xing repeatedly mentioned his ambition of making MBZUAI the Stanford of the Gulf, pointing to the California school’s role in nurturing a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship whose effects have rippled far beyond Silicon Valley.
The UAE is on a mission to become a global player in AI. The country appointed the world’s first AI minister back in 2017, and mandated this month that all primary schools add AI-based topics like algorithmic bias and prompt engineering to their curriculums. With MBZUAI, named after the UAE leader, it is taking things further: the school is aiming to be a feeder for Emirati companies, which now mostly hire engineers from abroad; an incubator for homegrown startups; and an AI research and development arm for the UAE. While the UAE has poured billions into building AI, MBZUAI wants to make the country less dependent on foreign talent and companies. Its role, in Xing’s words, is “train the people who can carry out the work.”
Trump may have just given the school a leg up in these ambitions. On his recent trip to the region, the US president framed a potential “U.S.-U.A.E. A.I. Acceleration Partnership” as a way to strengthen business ties between the two countries, and to solidify the US lead in the field. Under the terms of the agreement, the UAE would be allowed to import 500,000 of the most advanced chips every year between now and 2027, with a fifth set aside for G42, the country’s all-purpose AI company.
That’s a notable break with previous US strategy, said Kristin Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, D.C. Over the past two decades, as the country has strengthened its ties with China, US administrations responded by restricting UAE access to semiconductors and sensitive technologies. Last year, G42 agreed to divest from China upon entering a partnership with Microsoft. By contrast, this latest proposal does not demand any Emirati concessions on ties with China. Diwan described that as “a massive win for the UAE’s ambitions to become a central hub in the global tech economy.”....
....MUCH MORE
Recently on the Emirates:
- "Oklahoma inks deal with UAE company to build $4B aluminum smelting facility"
- "How China’s tech giants wired the Gulf"
- French Tech: France To Host Europe's Largest Data Center (UAE's MGX; EDF; NVDA; Bpifrance; Mistral AI)
- U.S. Still Mulling Whether To Allow Nvidia To Sell One Million+ Most Powerful Chips To UAE
- "UAE and US agree on path for Abu Dhabi to buy most advanced AI chips: Trump"
- "Free AI for all? UAE becomes first to offer ChatGPT Plus to every resident and citizen"
That's the last couple weeks.
