The UAE is looking to the future by diversifying its economy, expanding from oil into sectors such as data and technology. The Technology Innovation Institute’s (TII) (which is part of the Abu Dhabi Government’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC) release of Falcon 2, UAE’s flagship large language model (LLM), is a testament to the UAE’s efforts to assert itself as a worldwide digital and Artificial Intelligence (AI) hub.
The 2022 release of Open AI’s ChatGPT has been a driving force behind countries and companies developing their own LLMs. The UAE, however, has been proactively building digital infrastructure and investing in technology research and development (R&D) long before ChatGPT made its debut.
The UAE has been an early adopter of AI, appointing the world’s first Minister for AI, His Excellency Omar Sultan Al Olama in 2017. In recent years, the UAE has significantly accelerated the pace of technology and AI development. The UAE Cabinet adopted the UAE National Strategy for Artificial intelligence 2031, which aims to establish the UAE as a global leader in AI and to create an integrated system that uses AI in key sectors in the UAE.
How will the UAE boost socio-economic growth?
In April 2024, Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in UAE’s top AI firm, G42. The partnership aims to support advanced AI capabilities, to improve enterprise experience and accelerate digital transformation in key UAE industries.
The partnership will also support programs like the Artificial Intelligence Program managed by the National Program for Artificial Intelligence. The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence will create ‘a new generation of skilled and diverse AI experts.’
Boosting the talent pool of AI specialists is key for the UAE. Skilled workers are essential for state-led initiatives like Digital Dubai, which has digitised 90% of Dubai’s government services, and the ‘Smart City’ project.
UAE advances global AI superpower race with latest Falcon 2
The UAE’s next-gen Falcon 2 challenges big tech competitors, outperforming Meta Llama 38B and performing on par with Google’s Gemma 7B, according to results from Hugging Face, a trusted AI community platform.
Falcon 2 features a text-based model (Falcon 2 11B), and a vision-to-language model (Falcon 2 11B VLM) that can convert an uploaded image into a text description. Its capabilities have positioned it as a serious challenger to LLMs built by Open AI, Google and Meta.
The Falcon 2 11B VLM is TII’s first multimodal model. According to TII, the ‘image-to-text conversion capability is a key AI innovation’
H.E. Faisal Al Bannai, Secretary General of ATRC and Strategic Research and Advanced Technology Affairs Advisor to the UAE President has stated “We reaffirm our commitment to the open-source movement with it, and to the Falcon Foundation,”
“With other multimodal models soon coming to the market in various sizes, our aim is to ensure that developers and entities that value their privacy have access to one of the best AI models to enable their AI journey.”
UAE’s Golden Visa
As part of the UAE’s plan to attract foreign investors and talent, the UAE government introduced the UAE Golden Visa scheme A Golden Visa is a long-term, renewable residence visa valid for 5 or 10 years, available to certain categories of persons, including entrepreneurs. The Golden Visa scheme aims to attract innovators worldwide to test, grow and launch their big ideas in the UAE.
The advantages of a Golden Visa include:
- Long term residence (5 or 10 years).
- Path to residency.
- Ability to sponsor family members with a residence visa.
How is AI powered technology shaping professional work?
The Future of Professionals (FOP) report 2024 data reveals that 77% of survey respondents believe AI will have a high, transformational impact in the next five years. This year’s research surveyed 2,200 professionals including C-level corporate executives from over 50 countries.
Professionals have a more highly developed understanding of AI compared to last year’s survey results, its impact now and in the future. In five years, 56% of professionals surveyed believe AI-powered technologies will significantly impact their work.
Professionals no longer need to speculate on the potential for AI to impact their work. According to Steve Hasker President and CEO, Thomson Reuters, because professionals are now witnessing its effects firsthand.
“As we look to the future, one thing is clear: AI-empowered professionals and their companies will outpace those who resist this transformative era.” said Steve.
The FOP data revealed professionals are optimistic about the productivity gains AI-powered technology can deliver. Professionals surveyed predict AI-powered technologies can ‘save an average of four hours of work per week, each year,’ an estimated 200 hours saved per professional.
“It’s important to note that the overall market sentiment around models is positive, perhaps surprisingly so, and that many people see it as a force for good in their profession.”
“With rapid adoption underway and professionals finding a variety of practical use cases for AI, we’re embarking on an exciting era for these industries – and for the economy more broadly,” said Steve.
Additionally, the survey respondents believe AI will have a high impact by generating value by ‘giving back time.’ Focus on higher-level work with AI tools handling large volumes of data, improving response times and reducing human error.
Professionals based in MENA working in business, corporate and government sectors have shown great interest in leveraging AI innovation.
In January, H.E. Omar Sultan Al Olama expressed support for the UN’s ‘pragmatic approach’ at the UN Secretary- General’s joint press encounter. The universal and inclusive approach to AI and its ‘potential contribution for global development’
“One of the issues that we have had in the past were many of the conversations were relevant to either certain companies or certain parts of the world.”
“These conversations here are extremely relevant, they are extremely practical, and we can feel like there’s a roadmap that can be built, whether it’s for single countries, like the UAE, or for blocks or even for the world,” said H.E. Omar Sultan Al Olama.
Navigating the UAE’s rapid economic transformation
The UAE legal market transformation increases the complexity of navigating new regulations to ensure compliance. Rapid economic transformation presents a range of market opportunities and risks for corporations and their legal advisors.
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