Abu Dhabi will open a dedicated AI research center to cement the UAE’s growing status as a global hub for technological innovation.
The state-of-the-art complex will be at the center of the work of the capital’s Institute for Technological Innovation, which already houses the Middle East’s first quantum computer and research teams developing advanced materials, drones and robots for commercial use.
The center aims to bridge the gap between the seven laboratories of the research center and the area of AI diffusion by providing supervision and technical knowledge.
Take, for example, an autonomous ship being developed in TII’s robotic laboratory that is designed to navigate itself to the location of an oil spill and send out dozen of robotic “fish” to assess damage to marine life Information to hovering drones to set a course for cleanup.
This scenario is heavily based on AI capabilities and is one of dozens of commercial projects being developed on TII’s campus in Masdar City, the new AI research center will help collect relevant data and algorithms to support machine learning to develop such projects with plans and grow to 50 employees by 2022.
Recruiting talent and tackling projects with commercial potential in the region is what Dr. Ray Johnson said, who joined TII in August as the centre’s first CEO.
Before coming to Abu Dhabi, he was CTO of the US defense company Lockheed Martin from 2006 to 2015, then a partner at Bessemer Ventures, one of the longest-running venture capital firms in the US.
Dr. Johnson came from overseeing a team of 70,000 people working on 4,000 projects, so he is very used to seeing top talent, stated in The National interview about his time at Lockheed Martin. He was thrilled to come here to see that the talent that TII has already attracted is equal to or higher than the talent he was used to working in very large companies.
Autonomous robots are “a major focus” for TII, said Dr. Johnson, and they will likely be among the first products to be sold to paying customers. You can hardly read an unread newspaper or magazine about Amazon using them for deliveries or nation-states building skills that need to be watched, he said.
The security, energy, transportation and construction industries are of particular interest to TII, he said. TII, the applied research division of the Abu Dhabi Advanced Technology Research Council, is an important part of the UAE’s efforts to diversify its reliance on oil exports and develop a knowledge-based economy.
At the same time, the advent of AI, quantum computers, and more complex cybersecurity threats mean that nations around the world are busy developing independent technologies. One of the things that did the pandemic was to remind nations that this global supply chain and reliance on others carries risks, said Dr. Johnson.
Technical independence is certainly important, he said, but the goal is to develop world-class research laboratories that produce commercially viable solutions that can be “scaled” beyond the UAE and ultimately exported.
We took a good portfolio approach where some products, some innovations become products sooner, some innovations take longer, said Dr. Johnson. You want to have this portfolio approach so that innovations always come through go-to-market and reach customers.
Investing in local and international talent
While the robotics lab may be the first to commercialize a product, the quantum research center has a longer time horizon, he said.
partnerships are also essential. TII has signed 46 research collaboration agreements with 32 research universities, including Stanford University, Khalifa University, New York University and Purdue.
Dr. Johnson emphasized that the TII will always be an international hub for research. While the center employs 100 members and aims to increase that number, the goal is to be multinational and focus on partnerships. The kind of talent that we have today [at TII] and that we attract, and the situational awareness of science and environmental awareness in their field is the best I have ever seen, he said. We can build on that.
