UAE welcomes Trump's AI Action Plan, ambassador Al Otaiba says

The UAE's ambassador to the US has commended the AI Action Plan unveiled by the Trump White House on Wednesday.

Minister of State and ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba applauded the much-anticipated artificial intelligence plan just hours after executive orders related to the three-pillared AI strategy were signed by President Donald Trump.

Accelerating artificial intelligence innovation, building AI infrastructure in the US and leading in AI diplomacy are the strategy's three main sections.

“The UAE welcomes President Trump's AI Action Plan and is ready to fast track our strategic AI partnership with the US, first announced during [President Trump's] May visit to Abu Dhabi,” Mr Al Otaiba posted on social media.

“As a trusted partner, we are working closely with leading US companies to adopt and scale American technology in the UAE and beyond,” he added, referring to the 5GW UAE-US AI Campus announced in May.

The UAE ambassador also reflected on the country's commitment to a $1.4 trillion investment framework in the US related to artificial intelligence infrastructure, semiconductors, energy and manufacturing.

“We are collaboratively setting a new ‘gold standard’ for securing AI models, chips, data and access – delivering lasting benefits for both our nations and the world,” he wrote.

A week ago in Pennsylvania at an energy conference, White House cryptocurrency and AI adviser David Sacks boasted about the UAE's commitment to working with the US.

“I know that our Gulf state partners will honour our security agreement,” Mr Sacks said. He was talking about US confidence that American-made technology would be protected in the UAE and would not be diverted to potentially adversarial countries.

In recent years, the UAE − the Arab world’s second-largest economy − has pursued becoming an AI front-runner, as it seeks to diversify its economy from oil.

The country’s work has resulted in the establishment of start-ups, partnerships and investments from industry leaders such as Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI.

Through the creation of language models such as Falcon Arabic, the UAE has also sought to ensure aspects of Arabic culture are not left behind in the AI surge, as many large language models are based on English-language data.

In 2019, the UAE announced the establishment of a university dedicated to AI, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence.

Two years earlier, the UAE was among the first in the world to appoint an AI Minister, Omar Al Olama.