Microsoft and the United Arab Emirates-based artificial intelligence firm G42 have announced plans to open two new centres in Abu Dhabi aimed at promoting “responsible” AI initiatives. This collaboration reflects the UAE’s ambition to emerge as a global leader in artificial intelligence while strategically diversifying its economy away from oil dependency.

According to MSN, the development comes as competition intensifies in the region, with countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia vying to be recognized as alternative AI hubs to the United States. Additionally, there are concerns in Washington regarding the growing ties between China and Gulf states, particularly regarding technology transfers. This venture builds on an April partnership where Microsoft committed to investing $1.5 billion in G42.

One of the centres will focus on uniting academic researchers and AI practitioners from the private sector to establish and share best practices in responsible AI. The second centre will concentrate on creating large language models, which are designed to generate responses to queries based on extensive text data, specifically targeting “underrepresented languages.”

G42 has notable financial backing from the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala and the US private equity firm Silver Lake. Its chairman, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, serves as the UAE’s national security advisor and is the president’s brother. Earlier this year, G42 announced it had divested its investments in China, and during the partnership announcement with Microsoft, both companies assured the US and UAE governments regarding security matters.

The centres will be dedicated to ensuring that “generative AI models and applications are developed, deployed, and used safely,” according to the firms. They also emphasized that G42 and its affiliates do not engage in business with any entity listed on a U.S. government list of parties that face export restrictions.