At the World Governments Summit in Dubai this week, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang advocated for the concept of "sovereign AI," arguing that every country needs to own the production of their own intelligence.
Speaking during a fireside chat with His Excellency Omar Al Olama, the UAE's Minister of AI, Huang described sovereign AI as an "enormous opportunity" for world leaders. He stated that sovereign AI "codifies your culture, your society's intelligence, your common sense, your history – you own your own data."
Al Olama expressed agreement with this vision, noting that "that's why the UAE is moving aggressively on creating large language models and mobilizing compute." The UAE has been rapidly transforming itself from an energy economy to an IT hub, with AI being a central focus.
Naturally, delving into the practicalities of achieving sovereign AI, Huang stressed the significance of foundational infrastructure, notably the development of large language models that encapsulate a nation's linguistic and cultural nuances. NVIDIA's GPUs have been pivotal in this context, offering a platform that fuels a plethora of innovations across various domains, from cloud computing to autonomous systems. "NVIDIA GPU is the only platform that’s available to everybody on any platform," Huang asserted, emphasizing the democratizing effect of NVIDIA's technologies on AI development.
Huang's appearance comes amidst a multi-country tour meeting with global leaders about AI over the past six months. He has urged these leaders not to be "mystified" by AI, instead embracing it and infusing AI systems with local languages and expertise.
In response to Al Olama asking how he would approach AI if leading a developing nation, Huang stressed, "the first thing that I would do, of course, is I would codify the language, the data of your culture into your own large language model."
Huang also highlighted the democratizing potential of NVIDIA GPUs to empower innovation, stating they are "the only platform that’s available to everybody on any platform." He believes this ubiquity has unleashed new innovations spanning cloud computing, autonomous systems, and more.
Additionally, in contrast to past advice urging young people to learn coding, Huang now argues computing should become accessible enough that specialized skills are not required. "It is our job to create computing technologies that nobody has to program and that the programming language is human," he stated, asserting that now "everybody in the world is now a programmer."
The summit also spotlighted Moro Hub, a cloud services provider owned by Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, announcing it will build a green data center with NVIDIA. This shows the growing momentum happening with AI in the region, with PwC forecasting it could boost the Middle East economy by $320 billion by 2030.