US President Donald Trump's AI adviser David Sacks has heaped praise on his country's technology collaboration with the UAE.
Mr Sacks made the comments to The National on Tuesday, shortly after he took part in an AI roundtable discussion at the UAE's pavilion near the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
“UAE has been a great partner with the US,” he said.
The White House adviser was joined on stage for the AI discussion by Peng Xiao, chief executive of UAE artificial intelligence company G42.
Mr Sacks and Mr Xiao reflected on the 5GW UAE-US AI campus under construction in Abu Dhabi, which is set to be among the biggest data centres in the world.
President Trump's AI adviser said the UAE-US data centre, also referred to as Stargate, could help take some of the energy burden off the US, which is experiencing a rise in electricity consumption partially due to data centres.
“It's a good approach for us to encourage infrastructure buildout in the US,” he said, referring to allowing AI and technology companies to build “power generation behind the meter” while allowing allies of the US, such as the UAE, to also build AI infrastructure.
Mr Sacks said the US partnership with the UAE and others would ultimately help America win the AI race with China.
“If in the next five years the entire world is using Chinese technology, then one can assume that China won the AI race, but if they're using American technology, chips and AI models, then that suggests the US won,” he said. President Trump, he added, wanted to make sure that US friends and partners can use US technology in their respective networks.
Mr Sacks talked about the 1990s as proof of concept for alliances and technology, saying that partnerships helped Microsoft and Intel dominate desktop computing in that decade.
“The companies able to build the biggest ecosystems are the ones that win,” he said.
“That was the mentality we brought to this, and the UAE was a critical partner,” he said, reflecting on Mr Trump's visit to Abu Dhabi last year.
“This journey began with President Trump's visit back in May and that set the tone for everything,” Mr Sacks said. The US National Security Council and Commerce Department worked to prepare a framework where “friends and partners in the Gulf could participate in AI”, he added.
As concern continues among some American politicians about US technology potentially falling into nefarious hands, Mr Sacks said detailed security agreements, along with a “trust but verify” mentality would prevent that from happening.
He also said chip smuggling was an oversimplified narrative pushed by critics of White House AI policies.
“People talk about these GPUs (graphics processing units) like they're diamonds that can be smuggled in a suitcase but that's not what they are,” he said. The latest AI computers are “giant mainframes” that aren't easily movable.
“This stuff is easy to inspect and validate,” he added.
G42's chief executive also reflected on the US partnership with the UAE on AI.
“This is a partnership built on trust and we put a lot of faith in this strategic framework,” Mr Xiao said, adding that the UAE recently received its first export licence grant from the US for powerful Nvidia AI chips.
“They'll be placed in the capacity in the AI campus we're building to serve top customers in the US such as Microsoft and OpenAI.”
