AI in the United Arab Emirates

I spent the last week in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on a fact finding trip focused on the country’s AI ambition. I was part of an American delegation among Washington, DC think tankers, which brought back fond memories of when I was an inside the beltway person myself when serving in the Obama administration.

Although I have developed a notion that the Middle East is fast becoming a pivotal player in the US-China AI co-opetition a year ago, it was done mostly through reading, observing from afar, and intuiting from broad technology and geopolitical fundamentals. Up until last week, I had never been to the UAE, a key driver in the region’s AI wave, nor any other part of the gulf region. On this trip, we were able to meet with key decision makers from almost all the relevant institutions in its AI ecosystem, from capital and finance, to government agencies, to tech companies and universities.

Narratives often move markets and policies temporarily, but the ground truth is what’s valuable and enduring. And you can’t find any ground truth unless you are on the ground! This post is my first attempt at unpacking some of the ground truth I gathered, and what it all means for the future of AI globally.

(A lengthy but important disclosure: this trip was sponsored by the UAE Embassy, meaning they paid for our flights, hotels, most meals, and helped arrange all the meetings. The flight was comfortable and the hotels were very fancy, though our schedule was also so packed on some days that we had 10 minutes to eat breakfast, skipped lunch, and barely had time to go to the bathroom. This generosity should not go unrecognized and unappreciated. But at no point during the trip did I feel pressured or expected to “write something nice” about my experience, or write anything at all. Most people on the trip did not know I have a newsletter with more than 10,000 subscribers. When our official agenda was concluded on each day, I was left alone to my own devices to explore the country however I preferred without any restrictions. All meetings were conducted under Chatham House rule, so whatever insight I share in this post and future posts about this trip will not be attributed to anyone or any institution. It is an aggregation based on my notes and interpretations, so ...