UAE and Saudi Arabia accelerate purchases of Nvidia chips to boost artificial intelligence development

Morning news on August 15, Beijing time, it is reported that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are rushing to purchase thousands of high-performance Nvidia chips, joining the global artificial intelligence arms race, making this most popular commodity in Silicon Valley even more in short supply. .

Both Gulf countries have made public their ambition to become leaders in artificial intelligence as a means of stimulating economic development. But there are also concerns that authoritarian leaders in both countries could misuse the technology.

According to people familiar with the matter, Saudi Arabia has purchased 3,000 Nvidia H100 chips through King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that the chip, which sells for $40,000, is "the world's first computer chip specifically designed for generative artificial intelligence."

The UAE also ensures access to thousands of Nvidia chips, And developed its own open source large language model Falcon

at the state-owned Institute of Technology and Innovation in Masdar City, Abu Dhabi. The UAE has made the decision that they want to own and control their own computing power and computing talent, and have own platform. People familiar with the situation in Abu Dhabi say the key is that they have enough capital, they have the energy and they can attract top talent from around the world. People familiar with the matter said the UAE has made the decision to own and control its own computing power and talent and build its own platform. They pointed out that the key to this decision is that the UAE has sufficient capital and abundant energy resources, and also has the ability to attract the world's top talents

Just as the world's top technology companies are scrambling to purchase this scarce artificial intelligence chip At that time, the two Gulf countries also purchased a large number of Nvidia chips through state-owned groups.

US companies such as OpenAI and Google are currently the companies with the most advanced large language models, and are also the main buyers of NVIDIA H100 and A100 chips

According to multiple sources close to NVIDIA and According to people familiar with its foundry partner TSMC, it is estimated that Nvidia will ship approximately 550,000 H100 chips globally in 2023. However, Nvidia declined to comment. According to people familiar with the matter, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology is expected to obtain 3,000 of these chips by the end of 2023, with a total value of approximately US$120 million.

According to estimates, OpenAI successfully trained the advanced GPT-3 model in just over a month and using 1,024 A100 chips. A100 is Nvidia's previous generation chip and its performance is not as good as H100

According to people familiar with the matter,

This Saudi Arabian university also has at least 200 A100 chips and they are developing a supercomputer called Shaheen III

and will be put into operation this year. The machine will be powered by 700 Nvidia Grace Hoppers superchips, a type of chip designed for cutting-edge artificial intelligence applications.

According to people familiar with the matter, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology plans to use these chips to develop its own large-scale language models. This software is similar to OpenAI’s GPT-4 and can generate text, images and code comparable to humans. The UAE became the first country to set up an artificial intelligence department in 2017 and released the "Generative Artificial Intelligence" Guidance” to implement the country’s government’s plan to strengthen its position as a global pioneer in technology and artificial intelligence and limit the misuse of artificial intelligence through a regulatory framework

Falcon models in the UAE are currently available online Free to use. The model used 384 A100 chips and took 2 months to train. A leading expert on artificial intelligence and large language models said: "Considering the resources it uses, this model is really impressive. "I'm impressed. It's been one of the best models in open source." Venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen are impressed. An Emirati sovereign wealth investor said Andreessen had been in touch with the team. However, a spokesman for Andreessen declined to comment. According to people familiar with the matter, the UAE government has purchased a new batch of Nvidia chips to power applications and cloud services related to large language models. Be prepared

Western AI leaders and human rights experts worry that software developed by the two countries may lack the ethics and safety features of big tech companies

Evonne McGaw Wen, director of the European office of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said: "We are concerned about the discriminatory impact of artificial intelligence and its powerful power in illegal surveillance."

After energy prices surged last year, petrodollars gave Saudi Arabia The Arab and Emirati economies have brought unexpected benefits. Both countries have the world's largest and most active sovereign investment funds. Gulf state-affiliated funds have recently made deals with Western artificial intelligence startups, according to two CEOs of European artificial intelligence companies who asked not to be identified. Contact, hoping to obtain expertise in codes and large language models by exchanging computing resources

"In order to give full play to our talent advantages, they put forward high prices and data resource requirements." An executive said

When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visited Abu Dhabi in June this year, he spoke highly of the country’s importance to artificial intelligence and praised its foresight. He told a question-and-answer event in Abu Dhabi's financial district that the Gulf region could play a central role in the global conversation around artificial intelligence and its regulation. At a time when artificial intelligence has not yet attracted widespread attention, Abu Dhabi Bee started discussing the technology. He said: "Everyone is in the artificial intelligence wave right now, and we are very excited about it. But at a time when everyone thought artificial intelligence was unachievable, some people were talking about this technology, and I am deeply grateful to them. ”

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