Mideast: Big Bets On AI
I asked OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, what’s up with AI? It told me, “It’s embedded in your email, smartphone, workplace, education system, and even government policy. What's going on isn't just technological—it's cultural, political, and economic.”
If you are someone who uses Google, Instagram, a new iPhone, or the internet in general, you have likely been inundated over the last two years with opportunities to use AI and discussions about its uses.
While AI has been a focus in science fiction novels and Silicon Valley conferences for decades, it was only when OpenAI opened its large language model chatbot ChatGPT to the public that the conversation overwhelmed the mainstream. Internet users were struck by how rapidly ChatGPT could respond to user prompts and sound shockingly human. AI interfaces are everywhere now, and they are extremely powerful.
The economic interest in AI as a business sector is immense. Some economists estimate that a third of global businesses are either integrating or attempting to integrate AI into their operations. AI programs are moving at an incredibly rapid pace, and governments, businesses, students, and engineers are racing to keep up.
In the Middle East, the story is no different than anywhere else. Nations looking to diversify their business portfolios see AI as an investment opportunity. Gulf countries are betting on AI as an investment to bring them away from oil.
It is reported that MENA region-based startups raised over $250 million in May this year. Egypt invested $10 billion in increasing the technological capacity of its universities to meet the growing demand for computer science curricula and research.
The largest news in this category comes out of US President Donald Trump’s visit to Abu Dhabi in May. The United Arab Emirates announced an agreement with the United States titled the “US-UAE AI Acceleration Partnership” to facilitate cooperation between the two nations in AI development. The agreement has two parts. The first piece of the agreement is a hefty UAE investment in American technological infrastructure.
Part two of the agreement is the 1GW Stargate UAE AI datacenter in Abu Dhabi. Stargate is a collaboration between tech giants and investors G42, OpenAI, Oracle, NVIDIA, Cisco and SoftBank Group, as well as the governments of the United States and the United Arab Emirates. Stargate will be a massive data center in the UAE, which will be used to provide immense AI processing power to all of southern and western Asia. The power is predicted to be immense. OpenAI boasts, “Stargate UAE has the potential to provide AI infrastructure and compute capacity within a 2,000-mile radius, reaching up to half the world’s population.”
The UAE is hoping to integrate AI not only as an economic engine, but a tool of governance. The UAE isn’t alone. Israel is another big investor in AI for governance. So far, while in their war in Gaza, this has manifested as AI for war.
Sources within the IDF have spoken to numerous news agencies about AI military tools, which were fast-tracked for approval in the aftermath of the October 7th Hamas attack. Israel used an AI model to identify probable Hamas operatives in the initial airstrike campaigns. This model was predictive, and its accuracy rate is unknown.
More recently, the New York Times reported on an Israeli strike that used AI to analyze the monitored phone calls of a Hamas commander. The location was determined, based on the AI audio analysis, to be in one complex of apartments. The strike to kill him killed 125 additional civilians.
Israeli drones use AI to track targets. Mossad and other intelligence agents use Arabic AI chatbots to comb the internet and monitor popular sentiments and reactions in Lebanon and Palestine. While Israel is the first nation to experiment with AI during warfare, it will surely not be the last. Many nations are looking on and investing in AI as weaponry for security and aggression.
On the other side of the Persian Gulf, Iran is heavily investing in AI as well. Iran is struggling economically but making large plays geopolitically. For the Islamic Republic, AI is a cheaper way to invest in the military. According to Iranian state media, the Iranian Sovereign Wealth Fund has promised $115 million in grants and loans for AI research. The Iranian navy is also creating a data processing ship to join its fleet and increasing the regime’s ability to wage digital warfare. Rather than partnering with the US like the UAE, Iran is reaching out to Russia, China, and even South Korea to further its AI capacity.
Iran’s relationship with the US and US allies in the Middle East has been sour for a long time, and current diplomatic discussions around the Iranian nuclear industry are souring it further.
Some techworld observers have been elated about the AI race globally. Enthusiasts claim that AI technology has the power to drastically reduce human suffering in the realms of public health, war, climate change, poverty, etc. A supposed silver bullet. However, not everyone is gung-ho about the unregulated march forward into the unknown. Many tech philosophers are urging states to cooperate in the research and to cooperate in regulation. Competing countries are stripping back regulations to give their own researchers the advantage. Those preaching caution say this could be very dangerous.
