The UAE is among a small group of nations shaping the future of frontier artificial intelligence rather than simply consuming it, say the head of the country’s AI university.
Prof Eric Xing, president of Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) said there is much more to the university than merely teaching the basics of AI.
“A few years ago, only the US and China were producing advanced AI technologies,” he said. “Today, the UAE has joined the first league of AI producers.”
Under Prof Xing’s leadership, MBZUAI has positioned itself among the world’s leading AI research institutions, attracting students and researchers from around the world while remaining intentionally selective.
“We are not trying to become a very large university,” he said. “We want to remain elite, agile and highly concentrated on areas where we can have the greatest impact.”
The university received more than 10,000 applications this year, admitting only a few hundred students.
Speaking to The National after the graduation of MBZUAI’s fifth cohort on Thursday, Prof Xing sat surrounded not by walls of screens, but by shelves lined with rare scientific books, including an early edition of Isaac Newton’s work and what appears to be a rare early copy of work by Euclid, often called the father of geometry.
Prof Xing spoke about natural sciences, biology, health care and the long-term questions surrounding longevity and disease treatment.
“The area that excites me most is where AI meets biology and health care,” he said. “It directly affects everyday life, longevity and disease treatment.”
Digital twinning
That interest led to one of the university’s most ambitious projects, Virtual Cell, an AI-driven digital model designed to simulate how treatment and medicine interacts with human cells.
“Imagine having a digital copy of your cells that can be tested virtually before a medicine or treatment is used on you,” he said. “It is like a digital twin driven by AI.”
The project is still in its early stages, with the university expected to submit its first research paper on the outcome within weeks.
“It is still primitive, but it is a beginning,” Prof Xing said, “like the Wright brothers’ first aircraft.”
For Prof Xing, the UAE’s ambitions in AI are about far more than keeping pace with global trends. They are about building sovereign technological capability.
An example of this is the university's frontier large language model (LLM), known as K2, capable of powering chatbots, reasoning systems and AI agents, and forms part of the UAE’s push to build sovereign AI infrastructure domestically rather than relying entirely on foreign systems.
Frontier models get their name for being regarded as the cutting edge of AI. “K2 is recognised globally among frontier models,” he said. “We are effectively the third country in the world capable of producing frontier AI models.”
MBZUAI also helped develop Jais, one of the world’s most advanced Arabic LLMs, designed to strengthen generative AI capabilities in the language.
“An Emirati model is not only an Arabic-language model,” he said. “It is also a sovereign model produced by Emirati institutions.”
That idea of sovereignty was a prominent theme, particularly when Prof Xing discussed data protection and national infrastructure.
Data retention
“One of the biggest advantages of sovereign AI models is that data remains here,” he said. “We do not need to send sensitive information abroad in order to receive AI services.”
Another major focus for the university is what Prof Xing calls “world models”, AI systems designed not only to process language but to understand movement, environments and physical interaction.
He said the research could eventually help create more capable robots and autonomous systems able to interact with the physical world rather than simply respond to text prompts.
Despite the pace of development in AI, Prof Xing rejected the idea that machines are anywhere close to becoming fully autonomous.
“We are still very far from true machine autonomy,” he said. “Today’s AI is primarily about automation and productivity, not autonomy.”
He said current AI systems still rely entirely on human direction, training and goals. “The objectives, the training and the performance standards of AI are still defined by people.”
At MBZUAI, that rapid evolution means teaching methods and programmes are constantly changing.
“We continuously adjust our programmes because AI evolves very quickly,” he said. “We look closely at how much coding students need to learn versus how well they can extract insights from data and ask the right questions.”
Making the grade
Most of the university’s students are postgraduate researchers and around 80 per cent remain in the UAE after graduating.
“That reflects the opportunities available here and the strength of the ecosystem being built,” he said.
Some graduates have already received offers from companies such as Meta and Oracle, but many are choosing to remain in the Emirates.
He believes the UAE is now laying the foundation for its own generation of global AI companies. “In five or 10 years, the UAE should have its own companies comparable to Meta or OpenAI,” he said.
Recent regional hostilities have also demonstrated the growing importance of AI in defence systems, logistics and information management. “AI clearly played a role because you need advanced systems to calculate trajectories, timing and logistics,” he said.
At the same time, he warned about the spread of misinformation online during moments of crisis.
“There was so much fake information circulating online, including fabricated images and videos,” he said. “AI can help filter misinformation and maintain stability and calm within the community.”
For Prof Xing, AI is ultimately about far more than technology. It is about how countries prepare for the future.
On Thursday, MBZUAI graduated 140 postgraduate students, marking the university’s fifth cohort and five years since the institution’s establishment, a milestone reflecting how quickly the UAE’s AI ambitions have evolved into one of the country’s most elite and closely watched projects.
“Geographically, the UAE is a small country,” he said. “But with AI, success is no longer limited by the size of your land. It is limited by how smart you are and how strong your education system can become.”
