Preparing the future WORKFORCE
The recently created Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) aims to form the backbone of the region’s new digitised workforce, reveals interim president Professor Sir Michael Brady
MBZUAI is a world-first. Why set up an AI university when most institutes globally are now only offering AI courses?
MBZUAI is symbiotically related to the strategic plan for the region that gave rise to it. We do not regard AI as just another component of a computing science or engineering degree. Rather, we want to provide a coherent, detailed, and broad understanding of AI – from its theoretical foundations to specific applications. This implies the need for greater depth and greater breadth, and this can only be realised by a well thought-through set of interrelated courses. As well, in many cases of practical importance, applications of AI are at the cutting edge of the subject, and so tuition quickly morphs into research. This is why MBZUAI offers both MSc and PhD courses.
How does the institution fit with the leadership’s vision for the UAE’s future?
The UAE has a clear vision for the role AI will play in the nation’s future. This is outlined in the Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031, and realised through various initiatives throughout the Emirates that champion the value and potential of AI. MBZUAI will contribute to the leadership’s vision for the future, while developing talent that will contribute towards the progression of AI in societies across the world. The UAE leadership is supportive of MBZUAI and our goals, providing clear guidance for how we can establish our university as an institution that can contribute to the world’s societal development through AI.
Can you elaborate on the facilities that MBZUAI will offer?
MBZUAI will operate out of purpose-built facilities in the Masdar City complex. This will house the students, faculty, and administration, and will have state-of-the-art lecture theatres and computing facilities to support courses and research projects.
Applications opened in October last year. How has demand for the courses been?
The number and quality of the applications to enrol at MBZUAI has been extremely good – it has exceeded our expectations. We received over 1,000 applications for the 50 places (now 75) for the first cohort. Just under 300 of these were evaluated by three independent faculty/evaluators, from which just over 100 are under detailed consideration.
While everybody uses the term AI, there remains limited understanding on its scope. Can you elaborate?
• AI is an important, fundamental development in science with roots in computing science, statistics, mathematics, and logic. For this reason alone, the background of – and demand for– AI engineers will increase steadily, since the core competences of AI underpin many professions, including professions that are only now emerging.
• AI has surged recently based on developments in machine learning (ML), which in turn have profited not just from theoretical developments, but also from the ease with which large datasets can be accumulated over the internet. Again, there will be many applications – from healthcare, through financial services, to consumer applications for which big data and ML will play key roles.
• However, AI is more than ML. For example, there have been impressive, practicallyuseful applications of reasoning under uncertainty, causal reasoning, natural language understanding, as well as signal and image analysis and robotics. So, even if developments in machine learning – or any of these other topics – were to slow, even slightly, there will likely continue to be rapid progress in other aspects of AI.
Regionally, do we have the talent pool required to keep pace with the AI development pipeline?
MBZUAI embraces the challenge of contributing to the talent pool required to realise the growing needs for AI talent across a wide range of sectors, from government to industry – big and small – to hospitals. It is likely that there will be a surge in demand for such expertise, which our graduates will go some way to satisfying. To this end, MBZUAI will need to engage with the local ecosystem to create for students enrolled from outside the UAE such positive experiences of life in the country that a substantial percentage will remain in the region to build their careers.
In the longer term, is there a plan to expand the course offerings at MBZUAI?
The courses offered initially by MBZUAI emphasise depth in a small number of core subjects: machine learning, image analysis, and natural language understanding. Aside from providing a basic underpinning of a wide range of applications in which machine learning can add significant value, these also build on the expertise that has been developed over the past two years within the Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence. Image (and signal) analysis have a very wide range of applications, from security to healthcare to financial services and smart power delivery, while natural language understanding, per- haps the single most distinctive human facility, reduces barriers to communication. Looking ahead, MBZUAI can expect to recruit faculty, offer courses, and develop research projects in a wider range of AI subjects, not least in automating causal reasoning systems that go beyond correlation to ask “why/when/how does X cause Y?”