Consultant picture of the flag of the United Arab Emirates [File]
| Photograph credit score: AP
The United Arab Emirates this month canceled conferences between US congressional workers and the G42 after US lawmakers expressed concern that the Emirati AI agency may switch highly effective US AI know-how to China, in keeping with a congressional spokesperson.
The United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the US “personally intervened” to stop Home Choose Committee on China workers from assembly with G42 and Emirati authorities officers, mentioned the particular person, who was briefed on the cancellations and declined to be recognized because of inside committee insurance policies.
US lawmakers have expressed concern over a $1.5 billion funding by Microsoft in G42, fearing delicate know-how might be transferred to the United Arab Emirates firm, which has historic ties to China.
“The committee has even higher issues in regards to the G42-Microsoft deal given the UAE’s refusal to fulfill with congressional workers to debate these points. In consequence, Congress is predicted to turn out to be extra concerned in offering oversight of those negotiations,” the committee spokesman informed Reuters.
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The canceled conferences might be an indication of diplomatic fallout from rising efforts by China hardliners in Congress to scrutinize the G42-Microsoft deal and curb the move of delicate synthetic intelligence know-how to the Center East for worry it might be diverted to China.
The State Division declined to remark. A G42 spokesman referred inquiries to the UAE authorities.
A spokesperson for the UAE embassy mentioned: “There was clearly a scarcity of communication surrounding the go to” and famous that the UAE Embassy “solely turned conscious of the workers delegation shortly earlier than they had been because of arrive.”
The Embassy has met and spoken with lots of the Committee’s members and workers in current months, the spokesperson mentioned. “The Committee has acquired briefings regularly because the UAE and the US work to strengthen management of superior applied sciences which can be vital to the shared safety pursuits of each nations.”
The staff had requested the conferences as a part of a regional go to from July 16 to 19 to debate the switch of refined chips from firms resembling Nvidia to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, the spokesman added, in addition to technological competitors between the US and China.
In response to the spokesman, Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba cited a July 11 letter despatched by committee chairman John Moolenaar to US nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan requesting an intelligence evaluation of Microsoft’s funding in G42.
The July letter, additionally signed by Home International Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul, sought enter from the White Home earlier than Microsoft’s funding in G42 may transfer to a second section involving the switch of export-restricted semiconductor chips from Nvidia and mannequin weights — refined information that improves an AI mannequin’s capability to emulate human reasoning.
Final yr, the Biden administration imposed sweeping new restrictions on AI chip exports in an try to chop off extra avenues for China to acquire them, imposing a licensing requirement for shipments to the United Arab Emirates and different Center Jap nations.
The Biden administration has defended the G42-Microsoft deal, as a result of it pressured the G42 to interrupt ties with China’s Huawei.
The regional go to, which included officers from each the Democratic and Republican events, additionally included a gathering with Saudi officers, who “had been very keen to fulfill with the delegation and expressed a robust want to handle any US issues about (the Chinese language authorities’s) actions in Saudi Arabia as a way to obtain permission to import superior US chips,” the spokesperson added.
