By Ilan Zalayat and Dr. Yoel Guzansky
Shortly after Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar's visit to the United Arab Emirates, an Emirati artificial intelligence (AI) research institute announced the opening of a branch in Haifa.
At the same time, Emirati billionaire Hussain Sajwani announced a $20 billion investment to set up AI development centres in the United States.
The United Arab Emirates is seeking to diversify its economy, which remains heavily dependent on oil revenues, and establish itself as a technological powerhouse.
Within this framework, the federation has identified AI as a central focus.
The UAE is already an emerging global power in AI and has invested significant resources in the field, including establishing a dedicated government ministry, an AI university and recruiting top global talent.
The institute, which will open a branch in Israel, launched its Falcon language model last year, which rivals ChatGPT in its capabilities.
This success has raised concerns in the West, mainly due to the UAE's close ties to Chinese companies and its flexibility, compared to Western nations, in using citizens' data for AI training.
A notable example of this concern is the relationship between the Emirati company G42, owned by Tahnoon bin Zayed, the influential brother of the UAE president and the richest man in the federation, and Chinese companies.
There are fears that these ties could facilitate the transfer of US technology and data on US citizens to China.
Under US pressure, the G42 cut most of its ties with Chinese companies last year, replacing them with Microsoft.
The move was aimed at improving tense relations with the United States, and culminated in a meeting between Presidents Biden and Bin Zayed, where they signed a memorandum of understanding on AI.
Similarly, the UAE's recent willingness to invest in AI in the US, creating numerous well-paying jobs, can be seen as a gesture towards President Trump.
The effort is aimed at securing access to resources that were previously withheld due to concerns over ties to China, such as F-35 fighter jets.
Israel has a particular interest in strengthening ties between the UAE and the United States, especially in technological cooperation, as a means of reinforcing the Abraham Accords.
At the same time, these developments require caution and oversight to prevent sensitive technologies and data from falling into the hands of China or Iran.
Source: INSS – The Institute for National Security Studies
China has long since become a technological leader, and what has been said about China's potential is now a reality. There are many Western YouTubers who show the reality of China, where all citizens make all their payments by mobile phone, cameras for face recognition are widespread and allow for quick payments and security checks, many bars, restaurants, hotels, etc., use robots, the police also already use robots and drones, etc. These are things that still seem very far away in Western countries, at least I don't see anything similar in Spain. China is also doing its homework on climate change, with the majority of the population using electric cars and motorcycles.
We must not forget that China is still a communist country, the big companies are state-owned or linked to the state, and they do not mind investing billions of dollars sometimes in absurd projects, if they lose they have the big cushion of the Chinese state, or they are like poker players, they do not care if they lose because, if they are not very bad, they recover the losses with many other investments. In Artificial Intelligence, China is also a leading country, without making as much noise as the North American multinationals that are the undisputed leaders. China produces many Artificial Intelligences that compete with the leading AIs and in addition they are often free, they distribute the files and the codes so that anyone can use them for free or without paying royalties, and the costs per use can also be lower.
The uses of Artificial Intelligence are not limited to the most famous ones like ChatGPT, and there China can also have an advantage by having a lot of flexibility when it comes to collecting data for training and testing, being a dictatorship its citizens do not usually or cannot complain, while in the West everything is highly regulated: privacy, access to the data collected, copyright, patented codes of multinationals, etc. etc. etc. In countries like Spain, always one of the most backward in new technologies or always the last to arrive at everything, both childishness and the extreme right, the latter rather spreading crazy conspiracies, and especially the communists do not want to know anything about allowing companies to collect data without first going through endless controls regulated by laws of their politicians. For example, there may be hardly any electric cars in Spain, apart from the low purchasing power of the Spanish middle and lower classes, also because they are not interested in the new technologies that many models incorporate, and that can only go further, such as autonomous driving, which also involves having surveillance cameras on the Spanish streets. For example, in the case of Tesla electric cars, there are several cameras that surround the car and record everything that happens around it 24 hours a day.