Today's Edition
BATOOL GHAITH (ABU DHABI)
The UAE’s ability to turn its artificial intelligence ambitions into a lasting global advantage will depend on developing its own AI capabilities, building relevant models and moving from experimentation to deployment at scale, experts said.
Prof. Hakim Hacid, Chief Researcher at the Artificial Intelligence and Digital Science Research Center, said investment and ambition provide a starting point, but lasting competitiveness will depend on whether the country can develop and improve AI itself.
He identified three factors as particularly important. The first is people: Developing and retaining researchers and engineers with experience building models and solving real problems.
The second is relevance: Ensuring AI reflects the languages, cultures and priorities of the communities it serves.
The third is openness, with sharing models, benchmarks and research helping to build trust, attract talent and allow others to build on existing work.
“Sovereign capability does not mean working alone. It means having the depth to set your own priorities and be a stronger partner internationally,” Hacid told Aletihad on the sidelines of Ai Everything in Abu Dhabi.
For Abu Dhabi, Hacid noted that government services as one of the strongest areas for generative and agentic AI because of the emirate’s existing investment in digital government.
AI could make government services more natural by allowing people to ask questions through voice or text in their own dialect and receive assistance that better understands what they mean, he added.
Hacid also identified energy and industry, healthcare, financial services and logistics as sectors with significant potential.
“Agentic systems can monitor complex operations, flag issues early and support engineers in making faster decisions. Healthcare is another area, from clinical documentation to multilingual patient communication,” he said.
He added that financial services and logistics could benefit from processing large volumes of documents and transactions. Hacid also highlighted culture and heritage, including digitising archives, preserving dialect and making that knowledge searchable.
“The common thread is that the advantage goes to sectors that combine good data, clear use cases and access to models they can adapt and run on their own terms. Abu Dhabi has all three ingredients. The opportunity now is to move from pilots to scale,” he noted.
As AI becomes more autonomous, Hacid said human involvement should be determined by the consequences of a decision. “The line should be drawn by consequence, not by capability.”
Where decisions affect health, safety, legal rights, livelihoods or access to essential services, AI can support and accelerate work, but a person should remain accountable for the outcome, Hacid emphasised.
Routine activities such as transcribing meetings, extracting information, routing requests and handling standard queries offer much greater scope for autonomy, freeing people to focus on decisions requiring context, experience and empathy, he noted.
“The goal is not to slow AI down, but to deploy it in a way people can trust. Taking that work off people's plates frees them to focus on the judgements that need experience, context and empathy,” Hacid added.
From Efficiency to Growth
Costi Perricos, Partner and Global Generative AI Leader at Deloitte, similarly said the UAE’s advantage will depend on fundamentally redesigning processes rather than simply adding AI to existing ways of working.
He pointed particularly to the level of commitment in Abu Dhabi, noting that many businesses are already achieving modest productivity improvements through chatbots and copilots.
He noted that greater value comes when AI is used to drive growth rather than efficiency alone.
“In any sector, when you look at the big winners, they are not ones that are just focusing on productivity and efficiency, but they are focusing on growth,” Perricos told Aletihad.
He identified financial services, consumer businesses, heavy industry and government among areas with substantial potential. In industry, the opportunity may be less about reducing employees and more about increasing output.
Perricos agreed that human accountability will remain essential as autonomous systems become more capable. “The one thing that will not vary is that we will always have human accountability,” he noted.
He said organisations may eventually need to manage AI agents much as they manage employees, including determining when an agent is ready to deploy, monitoring its performance and deciding when it should no longer be used.
“In the same way that we have an HR department, we need an AR department, an agentic resource department,” Perricos added.
He indicated that humans and AI will coexist, with people remaining central where judgement, experience and accountability are required, including areas such as courts and audit.
