Juergen Schmidhuber in an undated photo. – Twitter/X: @SchmidhuberAI As world powers race to dominate in artificial intelligence , ambitious Gulf Arab states want to elbow into the conversation by injecting billions into the transformative technology.
Competition is fierce, but a pioneering AI researcher told Al-Monitor that Gulf players have opportunities to take on traditional tech powerhouses in this high stakes AI race. “To the extent that they can attract the best AI researchers and developers in the world, they’ll be able to become world leaders in this field,” said Juergen Schmidhuber, a German computer scientist who made early AI breakthroughs that have influenced Amazon, Apple, Google and beyond.
Schmidhuber’s statement can be seen as self-referential: He himself is now pursuing new AI discoveries in Saudi Arabia, where he leads the AI Initiative at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He took that role in late 2021, opening a new chapter in a career that has been anything but conventional.
Memorably, that saw Bloomberg in 2018 describe Schmidhuber as the “godfather the AI community wants to forget.” Despite producing seminal AI research, Schmidhuber hasn’t enjoyed the same recognition and acclaim lavished on peers in Silicon Valley and the reasons have been well-documented: He is a somewhat contentious figure in the AI world, known for clashing with fellow researchers over who deserves credit for creating what. Even Elon Musk has waded into the conversation, posting on the X platform in November 2023, “Schmidhuber invented everything.” Take that hyperbole as you will, but it only adds intrigue to his bet on Saudi Arabia.
Trading Switzerland for Saudi Arabia
Schmidhuber, 61, moved to the kingdom in late 2021 after spending many years as scientific director of the Swiss AI lab IDSIA — where he mentored students including Shane Legg, co-founder of Google DeepMind — alongside serving as an AI professor at the Swiss University of Lugano . Not too long ago some could have dismissed Schmidhuber’s move to Saudi Arabia, far from traditional global centers of technological innovation. However, amid other bold moves to diversify its economy, Riyadh is ramping up AI ambitions: […]
AI pioneer Schmidhuber bets on Saudi Arabia for trillion-dollar breakthrough
