PARIS: American tech giant Microsoft said Sunday that it would open a foundation to promote "responsible" artificial intelligence (AI) in the United Arab Emirates capital Abu Dhabi. The step "aims to promote responsible AI standards and best practices in the Middle East and Global South," Microsoft said ahead of an AI summit in Paris this week.

Emirati AI developer G42 and the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) will also take part in the project, the US company added. Microsoft said in April 2024 that it would invest $1.5 billion into G42, which is controlled by Tahnoon bin Zayed, brother of the Emirati president and the country's national security advisor.

Meanwhile MBZUAI has taken in a role in several initiatives launched around the Paris AI summit, which will gather political and tech business leaders as well as experts on Monday and Tuesday in the French capital. The university will on Sunday present a project mapping out the major risks arising from AI and solutions being worked on around the world.

Known as Global Risk and AI Safety Preparedness (GRASP), the effort is also backed by the US-based Future of Life Institute, a think tank that has regularly warned of the dangers of AI development. Its results will be shared with the OECD club of rich countries and members of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), a group of more than 40 governments that will also meet on Sunday.

The UAE is pushing for leading role in the emergence of AI with multiple collaborations in France. Paris's Polytechnique engineering school has announced a research partnership with MBZUAI, while Emirates leader Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan this week signed a deal with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron to build a vast AI campus and data center in France worth up to $50 billion. - AFP