TLDR : The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) and École Polytechnique are enhancing their partnership to boost AI research in France and the United Arab Emirates. This partnership will enable the development of joint research projects, including in biology, health, and security domains, and will facilitate student and researcher mobility between Abu Dhabi and Paris.
The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) and X, École Polytechnique, announced on May 20th a strengthening of their partnership aimed at boosting AI research in France and the United Arab Emirates.
Founded in October 2019 in Abu Dhabi, with the ambition to position the United Arab Emirates as a major scientific hub in AI, MBZUAI officially opened its doors to students in January 2021 with its first cohort of master's and doctoral students in artificial intelligence.
This strengthened collaboration with École Polytechnique extends a memorandum of understanding signed last February on the sidelines of the international scientific conference "AI, Science and Society," organized at X, as part of the AI Action Summit. In April, the two institutions also established an exchange program to facilitate the mobility of students and researchers between Abu Dhabi and Paris.
This enhancement in cooperation will enable the implementation of joint research projects, mobilizing leading researchers from both institutions. The work will focus on improving large language models, developing foundation models for reasoning, as well as exploring AI applications in the fields of biology, health, and security.
The partnership between the two institutions also relies on MBZUAI's presence in France through its Parisian laboratory. This lab recently developed Atlas-Chat, a family of open-source language models specialized in the Moroccan Arabic dialect (darija), with two versions: Atlas-Chat-2B for generating texts in common darija, and Atlas-Chat-9B for advanced uses.
This laboratory is also an integral part of the Institute of Foundation Models (IFM), an initiative led by MBZUAI, which brings together teams located in Abu Dhabi, Silicon Valley, and Paris to advance the next generation of foundation models.
This collaborative academic research agreement is part of a favorable bilateral framework: the largest AI-dedicated campus in Europe, to be built in the Île-de-France region, will be developed by a Franco-Emirati consortium, including notably the investment fund MGX.
Laura Chaubard, Director General of École Polytechnique, states:
"I am delighted to continue our strategic research partnership with MBZUAI. There are numerous scientific synergies in the fields of AI applied to health, security, and energy transition, as well as in large language models and foundation models for reasoning. I am convinced that these synergies will lead to rich collaborations in the future."
To better understand
What is a foundation model in artificial intelligence and what are its potential applications?
A foundation model is an AI architecture, such as deep neural networks, pre-trained on massive amounts of data to perform a wide range of tasks. They are used in natural language processing, computer vision, and other fields to enhance accuracy and efficiency.
How do bilateral research agreements influence the development of artificial intelligence on an international scale?
Bilateral agreements enhance scientific cooperation and resource sharing, promoting innovation and technological advancement internationally. In AI, this can accelerate the development of advanced technologies and establish international standards.