<\/p>\n
OpenAI\u2019s stated plan to stop the spread of tech-driven authoritarianism by helping oppressive Gulf autocracy UAE deliver artificial intelligence (AI) services that uphold democratic values across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia has been met with some skepticism from experts.<\/p>\n
But the US generative AI (GenAI) firm has declared<\/a> it is preempting China\u2019s ambition to become a world leader in \u201cautocratic AI\u201d and propagate systems that will help authoritarian states around the world oppress their people, crush dissent, stifle speech and spread propaganda.\u00a0<\/p>\n OpenAI said its \u201cStargate UAE\u201d deal in May<\/a> was its first act in that endeavour. In collaboration with the US government and the European Union (EU), it was creating a global, \u201cdemocratically powered AI network\u201d, building infrastructure across 10 countries to run the GPT GenAI models it was building to uphold the principles of democracy, free expression and free markets.<\/p>\n In the UAE, that involved building a 1GW datacentre \u2013 a site three times larger than the computing power of the entire country, and as much again as was built, being built or planned. Created to serve the government and public sector of one of the most oppressive regimes in the world with services from a \u201cdemocratic AI\u201d model, it would serve UAE citizens, too, as well as states in a 2,000-mile radius across the Middle East, North and East Africa, South and East Europe, and Central and West Asia, its reach is determined by the point at which communications become so slow that the latency interferes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIncreasing US involvement in the UAE will dent adoption of Chinese technology in the country,\u201d said Weber, a senior fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations.<\/p>\n But \u201cthe threat of China\u2019s AI in the Middle East is real\u201d, he wrote in an email. \u201cChinese AI technology that is already deployed is going to persist in UAE public surveillance\/security systems for some time.\u201d<\/p>\n Sphere of influence <\/p>\n Microsoft and other US investors had also put $100bn into UAE-state AI investor MGX. The OpenAI deal brought G42 into the partnership, creating Stargate US, Japanese investor Softbank, and US computer firms Nvidia, Oracle and Cisco.<\/p>\n Days before they agreed the investment, lobby group Freedom House ranked the Gulf monarchy<\/a> among the worst countries in the world for political rights and civil liberties, far below global standards.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is an authoritarian state ruled by powerful families, which punishes political dissent, has no political transparency or independent media, with academia infected with political indoctrination and granted almost no freedom. It represses free expression through surveillance and retribution, dominates people\u2019s political views, and has a corrupt legal system with no independent judiciary, said Freedom House. It has no elections, no right to organise, no tolerance of human rights organisations, and almost no equal opportunity, free movement, female agency, or protection against violence and control at home.\u00a0<\/p>\n By laws it uses to silence journalists, dissidents, activists, government critics and social media users, it has jailed scores of people, Human Rights Watch said<\/a> in its annual report.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cUAE has invested a lot in AI, not for democracy, but to deepen its connections with the US and China, and for increased repression, through more efficient online surveillance of journalists, critics, etcetera,\u201d said Jan V\u00f6lkel, a University of Ottawa professor who monitors<\/a> the Middle East and North Africa\u2019s political transformation for the Bertelsmann Stiftung foundation. \u201cModern technology will be used to control and suppress citizens, not to better include their voices in a political process. I don\u2019t see any specific reason to hope for political improvements.\u201d<\/p>\n Rights to freedom <\/p>\n The UAE has positioned itself as a global leader in humanitarianism, but that does not include rights to freedom and political participation, nor transparency or judicial independence.\u00a0<\/p>\n Technology has helped make the UAE state security services omnipresent, said the BTI report last year<\/a>. They monitor media and public spaces for dissent, and punish it with arbitrary and unlimited detention.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet the government\u2019s modernisation programme had brought such material benefit to the people of UAE that it created a strong social consensus for its right to govern, and gave the ruling families a high degree of legitimacy. The UAE\u2019s democratic, legal and social structure was feeble, but its economic transformation was phenomenal and its government administration exceptionally competent.\u00a0<\/p>\n