'The future belongs to those who innovate' - Israel and America sign AI memorandum of understanding

During Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s time in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, the United States and Israel signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) “to advance collaboration on energy and artificial intelligence.”

“The future belongs to those who innovate,” Netanyahu said during the signing, which took place at Blair House, the official guest house of the U.S. President.

“America and Israel are the prime innovation nations on the planet,” Netanyahu continued. “AI is the thrust of innovation now and will create unbelievable things in the future. It’s both challenging, because there could be bad things in it, but there could be unimaginable good things. I think we can lead this. This day will be remembered. Not every signing ceremony is as significant as this. This is very significant.”

The memorandum was signed by U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, U.S. Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter and Prime Minister Netanyahu.

“This Memorandum of Understanding enables our two countries to leverage our research institutions, and technology and energy sectors to ensure the United States and Israel are leaders in AI and remain energy dominant forces as AI transforms our future,” Secretary Wright said.

Both Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump have made the advancement of AI an integral part of their respective national goals.

“What I’m organizing is a government policy and a government board, with money, to make Israel one of the three top AI powers in the world,” Netanyahu said in 2023.

Netanyahu also said in a speech to the UN that humanity must “ensure that the promise of an AI utopia does not turn into an AI dystopia,” and that the world must “come together to shape the great changes before us.”

On Trump’s first full day as the United States’ 47th President, he announced that he was directing the government to support a $500 billion project to build the infrastructure necessary to create artificial “superintelligence.”

“I will help a lot through emergency declarations, because we have an emergency, we have to get this stuff built,” Trump said during a press conference with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, and Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison.

During the press conference, Masayoshi Son indicated that the project was an important step towards building superintelligence.

“Artificial superintelligence will come, to solve the issues that mankind would never ever have thought that we could solve,” Son said.