Abu Dhabi throws a surprise challenger into the AI race
OVER RECENT decades the oil-rich economies of the Gulf have shown a taste for flashy government projects with dubious payoffs. In the early 2000s Dubai spent an estimated $12bn building an artificial archipelago shaped like a palm. Last year Qatar splurged around $220bn hosting the football World Cup. Saudi Arabia, the region’s gorilla, is building a pair of 120km-long skyscrapers in the desert—for roughly $1trn.
Amid the vanity projects, some serious efforts at economic diversification are also being pursued. One such endeavour is under way in Abu Dhabi, where earlier this month a government research institute released Falcon 180B, its latest massive artificial-intelligence (AI) model, which is impressing technologists around the world with its performance.
Abu Dhabi has even bigger AI ambitions. “We are entering the game to disrupt the core players,” says Faisal al-Bannai, secretary-general of the Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), the government agency which houses the institute that created Falcon. He says that later this year the ATRC will announce the launch of a state-backed AI company to go head to head with the field’s leading lights, such as OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT. Though it will face an uphill battle, the Emirati outfit could yet emerge as a credible competitor. Its success will be closely watched both by rivals and by other governments seeking to carve out a role in an AI economy currently dominated by America and China.
2023-09-21 07:51:46
Source from www.economist.com
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