Khaldoon Al Mubarak, CEO of Mubadala, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund
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The world has yet to fully recognize the scope of the changes AI will bring to every aspect of human life, the CEO of sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Mubadala told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“In terms of risk… this is a technology that no one today really appreciates, really underestimates the level of disruption it will cause, impacting everything from our lives, our businesses, human capital, employment, every sector that will be disrupted,” Khaldoon Al Mubarak, managing director of the $330 billion fund, told CNBC's Dan Murphy.
“And I think that while there are a lot of opportunities, there are also significant risks, which is unclear today because technology is moving so fast and we're all trying to catch up as much as we can.”
Al Mubarak described the impact Mubadala is having on artificial intelligence and the infrastructure supporting the emerging technology, including data centers and chip manufacturing.
Mubadala is the founding investor of MGX, an Abu Dhabi-based investment vehicle focused on artificial intelligence. The fund participated in OpenAI last round of collection in October, which raised $6.6 billion. In the same month, wealth fund AI company G42 announced a partnership with OpenAI to develop AI in the UAE and regional markets.
Last year Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in G42as part of a deal under which G42 will use Microsoft's cloud services to run AI applications. In December, Washington approved the export of advanced AI chips to a facility in the United Arab Emirates run by Microsoft under the G42 deal, which has been closely scrutinized by US lawmakers for security reasons.
Al Mubarak expressed optimism about the future of artificial intelligence and the UAE's ability to leverage its investment strategy to leverage it.
“The demand for the use of this technology will be extremely high,” he said. This means that “the technology, the capabilities of artificial intelligence, that is, its infrastructure – whether it is energy, whether it is transmission, but also all forms of technology, energy technology, that will help meet this huge demand, I would also add data center expansion and chip expansion.”
“When we look at the horizon of 10 years, and that's how we look at these investments – we don't look at one or two years, we look at the next 5, 10, 20 years. And I think the increase in this demand is so great that even if we take a conservative approach, there will be an overwhelming increase in this area,” Al Mubarak emphasized.
“It gives me a lot of confidence. I think that's where I see it and we see an opportunity.”