CNN’s Becky Anderson sat down with theUAE Minister for AI, Omar Sultan Al Olama, to discuss his reaction to Apple’s announcement at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference that it will unveil a new OpenAI partnership.

The partnership, Apple says, will produce a smarter voice assistant (Siri) and offer some other additional tools to users, and sparked Tesla’s chief, Elon Musk, to ban Apple devices at his various companies if  “integrates OpenAI at the operating system level.”  

On whether Omar Sultan Al Olama agrees with Elon Musk’s claim, the UAE Minister for AI says, “I don’t blame him.”

On whether Omar Sultan Al Olama agrees with Elon Musk’s claim, the UAE Minister for AI says, “I don’t blame him.”

“The first thing is, it’s a black box, so you actually don’t know what goes in and how it comes out. For someone like him who is building competitors, who has an environment where, you know, proprietary information, secrecy is very important. […] ,” Al Olama explains.

The UAE AI Minister admits closed source risks, concluding, “As a government, we prefer open source, but at the same time, what you need is the best-in-class technology. If OpenAI today offers that, I think OpenAI is the partner that many companies are going to use, right? If someone else can produce something else that’s as good as open source, I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a lot more customers that you would expect.”

Key quotes from Al-Busaidi:

On whether Omar Sultan Al Olama agrees with Elon Musk’s claim that he would ban Apple devices at his various companies if  “integrates OpenAI at the operating system level” and Musk’s beef with OpenAI:

“Why? I think it’s actually the smart thing for them to say and do. The first thing is, it’s a black box, so you actually don’t know what goes in and how it comes out. For someone like him who is building competitors, who has an environment where, you know, proprietary information, secrecy is very important. […]

“So he believes in open source. They are a bit more closed source. I think that’s the essence of the beef and he’s a world founder, I think of that, I don’t blame him.”

On whether the UAE AI Minister shares Musk’s concerns:  

“Look, there are certain things where anything that is closed source poses risks, ok? And this is just for the sake of transparency. I wouldn’t recommend it to you here, that you’d be better off, everything is closed source. And that’s why the UAE, it’s actually a movement here, is actually to focus on open source, with Falcon, with the investments that we’ve made on the open source landscape. As a government, we prefer open source, but at the same time, what you need is the best-in-class technology. If OpenAI today offers that, I think OpenAI is the partner that many companies are going to use, right? If someone else can produce something else that’s as good as open source, I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a lot more customers that you would expect.