Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are buying thousands of Nvidia chips with increased performance without which the creation of powerful artificial intelligence software would not be possible, writes the Financial Times. Thus, the richest Arab states of the Gulf enter the global arms race with AI that depletes the most valuable resource of the moment produced in Silicon Valley.
These Arab countries, rich in oil and influential on the fuel market, have made public their ambitions to become leaders in artificial intelligence as well, a way to quickly equip their economy with other growth engines. But these efforts arouse mistrust because powerful computing tools end up under the control of autocrats. According to sources close to the situation, Saudi Arabia has bought at least 3,000 Nvidia H100 processors, which cost $40,000 each and are described by the company’s head as “the first processor designed for generative artificial intelligence”.
The purchase was made through the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Meanwhile, the UAE, which has also secured access to thousands of Nvidia chips, has developed its own serious open-source language model, known as Falcon, at the Masdar Institute of Innovation and Technology. The UAE wants to own and control its own computing power and its own talent, have its own platform and no longer be dependent on the Chinese and Americans, say sources quoted by the FT.
These states also have the money necessary for technological evolution and the energy that these efforts need. They also attract the best people in the field. Last week, the FT wrote about how China’s most powerful tech companies, including Tencent and Alibaba, are looking to buy high-performance Nvidia chips.
2023-08-19 07:25:31
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