The United Arab Emirates’ leader met US President Joe Biden in Washington on Monday to advance artificial intelligence co-operation as the Gulf nation tries to secure easier access to US-made technology.
The meeting comes during Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan’s first official trip to the US in seven years and underscores his determination to win White House support in his efforts to transform the UAE into an AI leader.
As well as discussing technology and trade, Biden said the UAE would now have “major defense partner” status along with India, to foster greater security ties through measures such as joint military training and exercises.
The UAE is one of the US’s most important allies in the Middle East, but relations have been strained at times in recent years. Talks for a formal security pact with Washington have stalled, and Abu Dhabi was infuriated by what it saw as a lukewarm US response to attacks on the UAE’s capital by Houthi rebels from Yemen in 2022.
Yet AI has brought new energy to the relationship. Oil-rich Abu Dhabi has made AI central to its plan to wean itself off fossil fuel exports and has taken a strategic decision to work with US companies producing cutting-edge technology.
“AI and new changes in cloud computing, etc, are going to change the way the world looks,” Anwar Gargash, Sheikh Mohamed’s diplomatic adviser, said in Dubai last week. “We cannot let this sort of wave of technological breakthroughs pass by us.
“If we believe that hydrocarbon is on the way out, slowly but surely, then we have to replace the revenue stream through something else,” he added.
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