Sam Altman of OpenAI Suggests UAE as a Global AI Testing Ground

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has suggested that the United Arab Emirates has the potential to become a global “regulatory sandbox” for experimenting with artificial intelligence technologies. He believes that the UAE could eventually take the lead in establishing worldwide regulations to restrict the use of AI.

“It’s very difficult to get all the regulatory ideas right in a vacuum,” Altman told the UAE’s AI minister in a virtual presentation at the World Governments Summit. “And if there was a low-key way to give people a future and let them try it out and then see what made sense, what went wrong, what went right, that seems like an interesting experiment.”

The world needs a unified policy to curb the future development of artificial intelligence, said the head of OpenAI, whose ChatGPT pushed the technology into the mainstream. “I believe that for a number of reasons, the UAE would position itself as a leader in discussions on this issue,” he said on Tuesday.

The comments came as Altman pitched investors in the Middle East for a semiconductor initiative to advance artificial intelligence. The United Arab Emirates has invested heavily in artificial intelligence and made it a central policy, but its ties to China have raised concerns in the United States.

On Monday, the CEO of G42, an Emirati artificial intelligence company controlled by UAE national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, told Bloomberg that the company would reduce its presence in China to satisfy Washington’s demands. G42 has partnerships with OpenAI, Microsoft Corp. and Cerebras Systems Inc.

Altman said in a statement Tuesday that OpenAI also plans to open-source some of the large-language models his company has developed, though it has not yet decided which ones. He also said the company is developing tools for poorer countries that cannot afford the huge costs of developing their own AI systems.

“We want to provide a sensible offering to countries that want to offer AI services,” Altman said.