The Emirates Foundation on Wednesday signed a partnership agreement with the Responsible AI Future Foundation in New York as part of the UAE's global push to harness the technology for global good.
The signing took place shortly before a discussion on AI, philanthropy and inclusive growth at the UAE's mission to the UN, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
The Emirates Foundation is an Abu Dhabi-based philanthropic organisation established in 2005 to drive social development through public-private partnerships.
The Responsible AI Future Foundation, launched by Microsoft and Abu Dhabi's G42, with the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence as a founding academic partner, works with governments and organisations across the Middle East and Global South to help countries build sovereign AI capabilities suited to their own languages, cultures and needs.
The two foundations will work together to use "AI for broader societal benefit, put responsible AI into practice, build capacity and skills, and help ensure the benefits reach people in areas of critical need", according to the announcement.
The agreement is part of a "venture that the Emirates Foundation and the UAE are embarking on, which is the notion of AI for good", Ahmed Al Shamsi, secretary general of the Emirates Foundation, told The National after the signing.
"We want to work with the world to build use cases and then actually cascade them down to communities that are in need, but also empower them and skill them to take these use cases as their own and benefit their communities and humanity in the ways they see fit," he said.
Mr Al Shamsi noted that Wednesday's signing was not a starting point in the foundation's efforts to harness AI for good, but a milestone in a much longer effort.
"We've been working on this for the past year and a half, but this is the milestone for us to actually press the green button and action things not just on a UAE scale but on a global scale," he added.
On announcing the partnership on the sidelines of UNGA, Mr Al Shamsi said: "The whole world is here at UNGA, and I think there's no use in just announcing something in the comfort of your own space.
"We want to tell everyone that the UAE is a platform for everyone to come and join hands for the benefit of all communities across the world. We want to bring as many people as possible to this platform that the Emirates Foundation is developing."
Mohamed Al Hosani, director of business development and partnership at the Emirates Foundation, said the next step after the agreement is to work with organisations in the UAE and beyond "to make sure that whatever we use in AI for good will be something that will help the community".
The foundation's work focuses on what Mr Al Shamsi called the "four Ps" – people, philanthropy, public and private.
"We are firm believers when it comes to actually building a cause or accelerating a cause, for us to have the public sector, the private sector and the philanthropies all present in one platform," he explained.
While the agreement was signed on Wednesday, Mr Al Shamsi said the implementation has "already started".
"We have the landscape to make sure that it's no longer just a theory and that we're actually applying it," he said.
"We've had a sandbox up and running in the foundation on some of these use cases, where it's maturing now, it's coming to fruition, and ultimately it's going to be ready to ship out as an innovation that's created in the UAE and with the mind of serving the community."
