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Abu Dhabi to have thousands of robots, self-driving vehicles as AI drives govt services
SARA ALZAABI (ABU DHABI)
Abu Dhabi is accelerating its AI future that will span autonomous government services, thousands of robots and self-driving vehicles.
At the AI Everything Abu Dhabi 2026, ADNEC Centre, Ahmed Tamim Hisham Al Kuttab, Chairman, Department of Government Enablement – Abu Dhabi, outlined how artificial intelligence could reshape economies, public services and everyday life.
He also highlighted Abu Dhabi’s experience in deploying the technology across government.
Al Kuttab said AI could fundamentally change the traditional relationship between labour and economic output.
“For the first time in human history, and within our lifetimes, productivity and output will no longer depend on human labour,” he said. “The more you can produce, the less it costs. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how an age of abundance begins.”
This shift, as he noted, could bring three major benefits: a lower cost of living, longer lives through advances in healthcare and more time for people as AI takes over routine and transactional work.
“AI is already helping scientists design new medicines faster and better than ever before. Diagnoses that once took weeks will take minutes. Treatments that once took decades to develop will only take years,” he said.
However, Al Kuttab argued that AI’s greatest potential lies beyond helping people complete existing tasks more efficiently.
“The real value comes when we stop asking AI to help people follow a process, and start redesigning the process so that it runs itself,” he said. “Not faster employees, but autonomous systems with people setting the direction and handling what truly needs human judgment.”
He pointed to Abu Dhabi’s government services as an example. This is with more than 1,200 services accessible through TAMM and AI increasingly handling requests from beginning to end.
Through AutoGov, he remarked, some services can also be completed proactively; such as renewing driving licences and preparing documents following the birth of a child.
“There’s a hidden tax we’ve all been accustomed to pay for as long as government has existed. It’s a time tax,” Al Kuttab said. “And in Abu Dhabi, and with AI, we’re ending that.” He said the transformation was already reflected in public satisfaction and operating costs.
Satisfaction with Abu Dhabi government services increased from 78% in 2022 to 92% in 2025, while the cost of delivering services fell by more than 30% over the same period.
“So, higher satisfaction with lower cost. In most organisations, those two numbers tend to pull at each other,” he said. “Better services usually cost more. In Abu Dhabi, and with AI, it costs less.”
In addition, Faisal Al Bannai, Adviser to the UAE President and Secretary General of the Advanced Technology Research Council, said technological sovereignty goes beyond owning intellectual property, arguing that countries must have the ability to understand, modify, test and evolve the technologies they rely on.
Speaking during a discussion with Becky Anderson (CNN anchor and Managing Editor of CNN Abu Dhabi), Al Bannai said this capability was becoming increasingly important as AI moves into critical systems and physical infrastructure.
“You really control the destiny of how that technology evolves, operates and you’re able to validate,” he said. “If you can't evolve it yourself, and even if you choose to use partners to help you, but if you do not have the control of evolving it, testing it, modifying it and really driving the destiny of that technology, it's not sovereign.”
He warned that relying on AI systems without understanding their underlying technology could create risks. This is particularly as AI becomes embedded in robotics and other critical applications.
“If you don't know what's inside that code, if you are not able to control the weights of that AI, then frankly you are a hostage to someone else giving you a black box and simply just gives you an interface for you to be an economic partner at the end of the day.”
On the global debate over whether development of advanced AI should slow because of safety concerns, Al Bannai said progress was unlikely to stop.
Instead, he called for independent testing, evolving standards and stronger scrutiny for AI used in areas that directly affect people’s lives.
He said the UAE is taking a dual approach by adopting leading international technologies and simultaneously developinrag sovereign capabilities and safeguards.
This includes open-source models and technologies such as Agent Guard (a technology developed by the Technology Innovation Institute), designed to provide additional safety mechanisms for AI agents.
“The UAE's approach is, let's adopt what's best out there. Meanwhile, let's build our sovereign capabilities,” he said.
Al Bannai identified agility as one of the UAE’s key competitive advantages; allowing regulators, government entities and businesses to experiment with practical applications rather than focusing solely on building the largest frontier models.
He said smaller, specialised AI models could address many practical needs across sectors including transport.
Further, he said physical AI would be an area where the UAE could emerge as a significant global player; particularly through autonomous vehicles, delivery platforms and robotics.
He said thousands of autonomous taxis, delivery vans and robots are expected to be deployed as the country scales technologies already being tested in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
“Next year, UAE and Abu Dhabi especially, the level of robots you will see in the street, the level of vans, robots in the mall, in your compound, in other areas, you will not be able to miss them,” he said. “They will not be in hundreds, they will be in thousands.”
