Today's Edition
ISIDORA CIRIC (ABU DHABI)
The UAE has ranked first in the Arab world and sixth worldwide in a new global index measuring how closely AI skills development is paired with human capabilities and a country’s wider readiness to adopt the technology.
Published on Tuesday, the AI-Human Skills Synergy Index assessed 98 countries on learner proficiency, AI-human co-enrolment, breadth of skills and the wider national policy and technology environment.
It’s a part of the wider Global Skills Report 2026 by Coursera and Udemy, which examines learning trends across more than 300 million registered learners, including which AI and human skills people are pursuing and which capabilities they are learning together.
For the country index specifically, Coursera learner behaviour accounts for 60% of the score, while Oxford Insights’ Government AI Readiness Index 2025 makes up the remaining 40%.
The learner component looks at proficiency, the overlap between AI and human-skills learning and the scope of skills being studied, while the Oxford Insights component covers government capacity, policy infrastructure and technology readiness.
Germany topped the index, followed by France, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Hong Kong.
The UAE ranked sixth overall, placing ahead of the Netherlands (7th), the US (8th), Spain (9th) and Singapore (10th). It was also the only Arab country besides Saudi Arabia - which came in 25th - to be classified in the report’s “leading” tier.
On AI governance, the UAE, Australia and Singapore were singled out for their emphasis on safeguards and assurance tools. Along with the UK and the US, they were categorised as countries that rely on voluntary guidance, technical standards, existing laws and sector regulators to guide AI practice, rather than a broad, binding AI law.
The report also pointed to the UAE and Singapore as examples of countries where high generative AI adoption is matched by strong positions in the skills index.
"Singapore and the United Arab Emirates illustrate a different configuration. They rank tenth and sixth respectively, and both feature high population-level generative AI adoption according to Stanford's 2026 AI Index Report," the report said.
"In countries like these, a strong synergy score may indicate learner momentum alongside a more supportive environment for applying those skills."
