President’s address to the Class of 2022

Delivered on January 30, 2023 at the ADNOC Business Center, Abu Dhabi

Thank you Dr. Sultan for your inspirational speech!

Your highnesses, your excellencies, Chairman Dr. Sultan, members of the board of trustees, colleagues, students, and friends, I am truly honored and humbled to be speaking to you today at the first commencement of the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence for the class of 2022.

Let me begin by congratulating our 52 new graduates for reaching this remarkable milestone after two years of hard work. By completing your master’s degree, you’ve advanced to an important stage of your professional career, you will trail blaze a path forward to dedicate your knowledge and service to our society. Whatever endeavor you pursue, I sincerely wish you great success. MBZUAI is the first research-based university worldwide dedicated to the development of AI, and we are proud to call you the first graduating class.

I’d also like to congratulate and thank parents, families, and friends of our graduates. Thank you for your unwavering support and love during their study at our university.

Finally, I’d like to congratulate our faculty and staff for producing such a fine class of graduates of whom we are all so proud. Thank you for your dedication to our students with your knowledge and your commitment, for which I believe every one of our students will be grateful throughout their lives.

Two years ago, I took an audacious and exciting decision, like most of our graduates, to move to Abu Dhabi to join the university. I came with a strong determination to build MBZUAI into a world-leading research institution. I envision MBZUAI to be a home for top scientists, a bedrock for the UAE’s technological competitiveness, and a catalyst for innovation and positive disruption in the country and beyond.

Today, MBZUAI has risen to become a world top-25 AI program and our faculty are among the most active and recognized researchers on the world stage of AI, as evidenced by their leading roles in top academic conferences and the impact of their publications. Our researchers are partnering with over 20 international and local entities including the Crown Prince Court and IBM in solving societally pressing problems in environment, healthcare, public safety, education, and culture.

And MBZUAI is cementing its reputation as a rising hub for advanced AI education and thought leadership, attracting strong interest in collaborations from the very best universities around the world, including MIT, U.C. Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Oxford, École Polytechnique, Weizmann Institute of Science, Seoul National University, to name a few.

But this is just the beginning of a long journey in our pursuit of excellence to build a great institution, which may take decades if not centuries. Science and technology is the driving-force of a country’s lasting vibrancy, prosperity, and strength. As in agriculture, the cultural soil of science does not come with impromptu and transient planting, farming, or grafting, but requires generations of cultivation, gardening, and fertilization. This is what great universities do.

Professor Eric Xing speaks to the inaugural class of MBZUAI graduates January 30, 2023.

We believe MBZUAI’s role goes far beyond solving the current problems that society is facing and training the workforce that society needs. Its role is also to become a beacon of the UAE’s and the Arab world’s great rejuvenation as a leading society in scientific discovery and innovation, to be a symbol of the UAE’s uncompromising quest for knowledge and education. Toward this end, I urge our faculty and students to bear in mind the larger meaning of your work and your mission.

We are living in an era of unprecedented societal transformation by technology. In particular, the world is being rocked by AI. From algorithmic agriculture to reusable rockets, from the prediction of protein structures in drug design to the forecasting of virus spread in pandemic containment, AI is the game changer that offers the edge. In 2022, for example. Two Nobel prizes were heavily AI related: the award for medicine on the study of genomes of extinct hominids and human evolution, and the award for economics on models of bank runs. Both have close ties to the theory and practice in AI, namely string matching and game theory.

In our daily lives, through apps that track people’s activities and algorithms that makes recommendations to people, our lifestyles, behaviors, perceptions, and even judgements are so deeply intertwined with AI computing. AI can make decisions on what we eat, what we read, and how we interact. Powerful systems like ChatGPT are even on their way to creating artificial knowledge. It is no exaggeration to say that AI is reshaping our lives, societies and future, but this is not without risk.

From history, we’ve learned how the application of technology in the absence of social good and sensitivity can have harmful impacts. In the 1950s, chemists produced pesticides and related materials that today affect the health of communities and remain in our environment. AI will be no different. Its power will enable solutions and scientific discoveries, but it can also be used for nefarious purposes if in the wrong hands. Even the best of intentions can unleash unintended consequences.

So graduates, before becoming a good scientist, engineer, or entrepreneur, you must first be a virtuous person, and cultivate the ability to make the right judgements. The virtues passed down through generations and that transcend cultures: honesty, compassion, valor, justice, sacrifice, honor, spirituality, and humility are still worth embracing and reflecting on even in this digital age, as they can guide you to focus on meaningful research and work and to strive and overcome distractions and illusions.

The UAE’s wise leadership has envisioned a remarkable future in which the UAE shall be a force for good advancing a new industrial revolution and improving human wellbeing. This nation has shown the will and the capacity as an early adopter in emerging AI technologies across government and industry. MBZUAI must be ready to undertake the responsibility of supplying the well-trained workforce and cutting-edge technology toward this mission.

I’m proud to see that the majority of you, class of 2022 graduates, decided to take up jobs or higher degrees here in the UAE, becoming part of the fabric of this society and contributing your growing expertise learned at the university. I also note that you come from 24 countries and, together with our faculty and staff, you embody the core values of this country: hard work, inclusion, tolerance, diversity, and respect. As a university, MBZUAI is committed to fostering a vibrant, free, and diverse environment, because science always thrives on diversity of ideas and methods, and from that we can grow a dynamic and lasting institution.

Before I conclude, I would like to leave you with our university motto — Power from Knowledge to Serve — a guiding principle that I have lived with throughout my adult life. All of us gain knowledge to become empowered, to effect change and make the world a better place. But empowerment for its own sake is not meaningful; it must lead us to serve and make the world around us better. That is service.

Now as you go out into the world, I also challenge you to maintain a focus on service to your institutions, your communities, or your country – that is the highest calling for an individual.

Students, faculty, staff of MBZUAI, I am proud to celebrate your dedication, commitment and ambition. I also call on all of you and the supporters of MBZUAI around the world to continue to make our university the new “house of wisdom” in this amazing land.

A great university is remembered for the great minds it nurtures, not the great halls it erects.

I sincerely wish that, through unwavering and uncompromising efforts from all of us, for generations to come, our university will become a radiant dandelion of science – helping to root the culture of innovation and discovery among the great people of this land.

Congratulations to you all, and good luck with all your future endeavors.