Today's Edition
Mays Ibrahim (ABU DHABI)
A new UAE-led index is aiming to track how artificial intelligence is reshaping human thinking, learning, and decision-making worldwide.
The AI Cognitive Transformation Index 2027, currently being developed by TRENDS Research and Advisory, will examine how growing reliance on AI is affecting cognition, identity, productivity, confidence and the way knowledge is acquired and used.
The index is intended to address what TRENDS researchers describe as a gap in existing AI measurements, which tend to focus on areas such as institutional adoption, government readiness, economic impact and competitiveness.
“Most of the indexes we see around the world today look at how widely AI is being adopted by institutions and how people are learning to use it,” Abrar Mohamed Al Ali, Head of the Opinion Polls Sector at TRENDS Barometer, told Aletihad on the sidelines of the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.
“But there is still a gap,” she said. “We haven’t really looked at how this growing use of AI is affecting our identity, our language and, most importantly, the way we think and process information.”
The index will examine whether people are using AI as a tool to enhance their capabilities or increasingly relying on it to perform tasks that would previously have required independent thinking.
“AI allows one person to accomplish what previously might have taken many, and that is incredibly powerful,” Al Ali said. “But are we relying on it so much that we are gradually outsourcing our own thinking?”
The index will not be designed solely to identify risks. TRENDS said it will assess both the positive and negative effects of AI use to ensure a balanced picture.
An Annual Global Measure
Al Ali said the longer-term objective is to establish a baseline that can be revisited annually and potentially show how societies are changing over five, 10, or even 20 years.
TRENDS plans for the index to begin with between six and 15 countries, selected based on their relationship with and influence on AI.
The index is intended to become an annual assessment, with additional countries potentially added over time as AI adoption and the availability of information develops, Al Ali noted.
Data collection for the first edition is planned to begin in the first quarter of 2027, with the first results expected in the first quarter of 2028.
