Abu Dhabi throws a surprise challenger into the AI race

OVER RECENTBAI decades the oil-rich economies of the Gulf have shown a taste for flashy government projects with dubious payoffs. In the early 2000s Dubai spent an estimated $12bn building an artificial archipelago shaped like a palm. Last year Qatar splurged around $220bn hosting the football World Cup. Saudi Arabia, the region’s gorilla, is building a pair of 120km-long skyscrapers in the desert—for roughly $1trn.Amid the vanity projects, some serious efforts at economic diversification are also being pursued. One such endeavour is under way in Abu Dhabi, where earlier this month a government research institute released Falcon 180, its latest massive artificial-intelligence () model, which is impressing technologists around the world with its performance.