The same reason superstar athletes and athletic events are all flocking to the Middle East. Some of the richest fortunes on the planet are associated there, but they’ve been amassed almost exclusively on oil and in nations that are generally considered highly conservative and insular and in an area of the world likely to be most severely impacted by climate change. They are throwing hundreds of billions of dollars to try and get the rest of the world invested in them before the need for oil disappears and they are left to wither and die. Hence tourist cities like Dubai exploding practically overnight. There’s also been enormous spending in the Middle East on sporting events like the FIFA World Cup, golf, soccer and basketball stars, F1, boxing and MMA, and even eSports. Look at how valuable the fab industry has made Taiwan to the world. Something similar in the Middle East is something many oligarchs there would be more than happy to throw money at.

Because the Middle East has oil money, and they know that the age of oil is coming to a close (or that there is some risk that it is coming to a close, same same, see also option pricing) and they want to mitigate the loss of income by investing in stuff.

Money is one thing, geopolitical risk is another much more turbulent force than the markets.

Gulf states and their sovereign wealth funds are great source of dumb money.

I mean, I'll state the obvious: Money.

That, and despite a lot of really bad PR (and a lot of very real human rights abuses) the Saudi's are not as black as they're painted.

G42 is Emirati, but KAUST is Saudi as you mentioned. Not sure what the PR on the UAE is like.

> I was not aware that the Arab states were such a Mecca (pun very much intended) for AI

Why wouldn't they? The Arab world loves science

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_medieval_Islami...

Because the current AI boom started around 2010-2016, and the time period to which you are referring ended about 800 years earlier.

So they shouldn't be interested anymore because the last time they were was a long time ago?

Would you say something similar about Italy if they were to be interested about AI (no tech, no space, no chip industries), but couldn't because the last time they were interested in mathematics was during the Renaissance period?

I'm the heretic one

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

Italy is not an AI hub to my knowledge.

I would be very surprised if high profile AI figures and companies started making ties with them.

What are you getting at?

The Islamic world's golden age of science reached its short peak over a thousand years ago. Hardly a relevant example. It's like using Euclid and Archimedes as examples of how the Greeks have a passion for math.

So they are no longer allowed to be back at it? What are you trying to suggest here?

Be supportive of countries wanting to be interested in science instead of being so negative