President Donald Trump has hailed deepening ties between the United States and the United Arab Emirates and said that the latter will invest 1.4 trillion in the former's artificial intelligence sector over the next decade. "I have absolutely no doubt that the relationship will only get bigger and better," Trump said on Thursday at a meeting with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, on the final leg of his three-country tour of the Gulf region that saw him strike a series of lucrative tech, business and military deals that he said amounted to 10 trillion. Sheikh Mohammed said the UAE remained "committed to working with the United States to advance peace and stability in our region and globally". The deal with UAE is expected to enable the Gulf country to build data centres vital to developing artificial intelligence models. The countries did not say which AI chips could be included in UAE data centres.

Microsoft has announced plans to invest 1.7bn in artificial intelligence and cloud services in Indonesia. Under the plans unveiled by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the tech giant will train 840,000 people in Indonesia in the use of AI and provide support for the country's growing ranks of tech developers. The announcement marks the biggest investment by Microsoft in its nearly three-decade history in the Southeast Asian country. Nadella on Tuesday held talks with President Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, at Jakarta's presidential palace before delivering a keynote speech about AI in the Indonesian capital. "This new generation of AI is reshaping how people live and work everywhere, including in Indonesia," Nadella said on the first stop of a tour of Southeast Asia.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission will boost its investment in artificial intelligence by about 70 percent to 1.5 billion euros ($1.83 billion) by 2020 to catch up with Asia and the United States, which are each investing at least three times more than Europe. Artificial intelligence promises to revolutionize sectors from healthcare to transport to agriculture and Europe is keen not to be left behind in the digital race. The Commission, the EU executive, wants total private and public investment in AI to reach at least 20 billion euros by the end of 2020 to ensure the bloc retains competitiveness and does not face a brain drain. In 2016 European private investments in AI totaled around 2.4-3.2 billion euros, compared to Asia's almost 10 billion euros and America's 18 billion euros. "Just as the steam engine and electricity did in the past, AI is transforming our world," said Andrus Ansip, Vice-President of the European Commission, on Wednesday.

"Today, we are giving a boost to researchers so that they can develop the next generation of AI technologies and applications, and to companies, so that they can embrace and incorporate them." Other European countries such as France and Britain have also made AI investment a priority. French President Emmanuel Macron promised 1.5 billion euros of public money for AI in March. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to.