The world of generative AI had to review its atlas. While the heavyweights of artificial intelligence challenge each other with announcements and billions, a newcomer has made a thunderous entrance onto the scene: the United Arab Emirates. Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, even sees this federal state as an ideal “experimentation ground” for testing AI and defining appropriate global regulation. “It is very difficult to determine the right rules. If it is possible to let citizens touch and try this future in a closed environment, to see what makes sense, what problems it poses and what benefits it brings, that would be a useful experience,” he declared by videoconference during the World Government Summit in Dubai in mid-February.
Abu Dhabi is part of the select club of countries with a large language model (LLM): Falcon. Its most powerful version has 180 billion parameters and is open source – anyone can study it and use it to develop products. “Falcon immediately ranked among the best open models,” notes Rahul Arya, managing partner of AI consultancy Artefact, responsible for the Middle East and North Africa region. Over the past year, the United Arab Emirates have increased their announcements in this area.
Last April, the State launched a guide to generative AI in order to boost innovation and the adoption of this technology. Like Saudi Arabia, it began buying by the thousands those expensive Nvidia chips specialized in artificial intelligence that the tech giants are vying for. “It is also the first country in the world to have appointed an AI minister in 2017,” underlines Julien Nocetti, associate researcher at the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri) and the Geopolitics of the Datasphere center (Geode) . Just this month, the country launched a $300 million Falcon Foundation to promote the development of open source generative AI.
A great language model in Arabic
If Abu Dhabi’s strong arrival in AI took the sector by surprise, it is nevertheless the result of a carefully considered strategy. “All the Gulf countries are today working to diversify their economies beyond hydrocarbons,” explains Laura Connell, partner of the European fund Atomico. Becoming influential in generative AI, a key technology of the 21st century, is also a way of gaining a certain independence from the United States and China. “An important balance, at a time when the United Arab Emirates dreams of itself as the chief supplier of the Global South,” points out Julien Nocetti. All while ensuring the development of better adapted products.
Trained on data from our human societies, generative AI is a distorting mirror. Although different methods help mitigate this pitfall, their responses partly reflect the culture and biases of the people whose creations they have digested. One of the most notable consequences is that AIs perform much better in English than in other languages. Abu Dhabi has perfectly identified this problem. Its Technology Innovation Institute (TII) worked with French specialist LightOn to develop Noor, a large Arabic language model unveiled in April 2022. “Noor was trained on a new corpus, unique in its kind, which required significant data curation work because there are many Arabic dialects”, underlines Laurent Daudet, general manager and co-founder of LightOn.
The United Arab Emirates nevertheless faces complex challenges in becoming an influential player in artificial intelligence. The main ? A glaring lack of qualified experts. The State does not have the academic sectors of a country like France or the United Kingdom, nor their quantity of graduates. “And to attract renowned researchers and scientists, they must forget this image of the backyard of influencers that sticks to them,” underlines the Ifri associate researcher.
The Emirates have a crush on fleas
Will the Gulf country succeed? In any case, he has a trump card in his game, which smoothes out many problems. “Its financial resources allow it to make massive investments,” points out Rahul Arya, of Artefact. The Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund (Adia) alone manages nearly $1,000 billion in assets! And that of Dubai more than 300 billion. An ease that makes all the difference, because in AI, much more than in other technological fields, the development cost is high. Training large language models costs tens of millions of dollars. And since experts capable of carrying out these projects are rare, they are poached with huge checks.
The UAE’s deep pockets even allow the country to delve into the most expensive layer of AI: chip development and manufacturing. According to Financial Times, OpenAI boss Sam Altman, who wishes to embark on this adventure, is said to be in discussions with several influential investors from the UAE, notably Sheikh Tahnoun ben Zayed al-Nahyan. In the AI gold rush, shovel and pickaxe makers will be among the big winners. The stratospheric results of Nvidia, whose valuation now exceeds $1.9 trillion, bear witness to this.
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