Fears that China could be using Middle East countries as a proxy to overcome US sanctions on machine learning accelerators are justifiable, according to the United Arab Emirates minister of AI and digital economy.
"We think that the UAE has proven to be a strategic partner with the US. Sometimes you are a victim of the neighborhood you are in," he added. Over the past few years, the UAE-backed G42 has emerged as an AI leader in the Mid-East region. The mega-corporation has acquired large numbers of GPUs from the likes of Nvidia and fueled the growth of California upstart Cerebras Systems, which develops supercomputing clusters of wafer-size chips.red flags over G42's ties to Chinese firms, voicing fears it could be furnishing Chinese interests with the supercomputing power necessary to further Beijing's agenda.