We will soon live in the artificial general intelligence age. What you do with that information will determine your place in history.
Last week, the UAE announced that a National Artificial Intelligence System would become a non-voting member of all federal and government company boards – and an advisory member of the Council of Ministers starting next year.
The world should take notice.
This isn’t just a headline-grabbing initiative or a clever nod to the AI hype cycle. It is a serious declaration: governance itself is being reimagined. Intelligence – both human and artificial – will now sit side by side at the decision-making table.
Once again, the UAE isn’t waiting for the future to arrive – it is shaping it.
This move comes as the OECD’s latest Reimagining Government report makes a powerful case: that public sectors can no longer function as slow-moving regulators. They must become shapers of behaviour, markets and futures.
While most of the world debates AI’s ethical dilemmas or fears job displacement, the UAE is pivoting boldly towards the opportunity – transforming AI from a back-office assistant into a strategic actor in policy and decision-making.
The UAE is transforming AI from a back-office assistant into a strategic actor in policy and decision-making.
Though it began in academic labs in the 1950s, AI has matured exponentially in the past three years.
Today’s systems can analyse billions of data points, detect anomalies in financial flows, simulate geopolitical risk and model climate shocks in real time. This is more than automation as we progress fast towards AGI – systems capable of human-level reasoning across diverse domains. These systems don’t just respond; they think, adapt and generate original insights, and – according to OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei – AGI could be with us in as little as two years.
If you are sitting in government, prepare for this: an AGI system tasked with revising a national budget could process 30 years of fiscal policy, the current citizen sentiment, environmental data, infrastructure needs and long-term equity goals – then simulate the impact of dozens of policy decisions. Any of this could be done in a matter of hours, not months.
The private sector is already embracing AI-powered leadership. Salesforce, for example, reports that AI performs up to 50 per cent of its work with 93 per cent accuracy. Chinese gaming firm NetDragon Websoft appointed an AI chief executive, seeing a 10 per cent stock increase. In Poland, Dictador placed an AI executive in charge of strategy. These are no longer public relations stunts – they are the front edge of a new executive model.
But the UAE is taking this one step further: it is nationalising the model. Institutionalising it. Making AI an official advisory participant in the heart of government.
The AI entity will not vote or replace ministers. Instead, it will serve as a strategic co-pilot: scanning, simulating and synthesising complex variables to support sharper, faster and more transparent decisions. This is the embodiment of what the OECD calls the shift from “reactive bureaucracy” to anticipatory governance.
AI’s involvement at board level is just the beginning. Ministries of health will use it to model pandemic responses. Trade agencies will forecast demand shifts before they happen. Environmental teams will design adaptive strategies based on real-time data.
And this entire transformation is happening within a sovereign, ethical and encrypted framework, aligning with the UAE’s AI governance standards – building public trust in a moment when “black box” algorithms threaten transparency.
This is critical, as the OECD emphasises that agility is the new legitimacy. In an age of rapid shocks – climate, health, geopolitical – slow governments lose trust. The UAE’s model, by contrast, offers real-time simulation, data-informed decisions and transparency by design.
But this leap forward demands more than infrastructure – it demands people. The OECD notes the importance of system thinking, digital capacity and collaborative leadership. These are not optional skills. They are core to the government’s relevance in the AI age. That means upskilling every tier of public service. Not just AI engineers, but policy designers, frontline officers, educators and regulators. Everyone must learn to work with, not just around, machines.
In adopting AI in the form, the UAE offers a practical answer to one of the OECD’s boldest provocations: what if government itself became a platform for intelligence – human and artificial – to co-create the future?
And yet, as the OECD warns, the future is already here, but it’s not evenly distributed. While countries such as the UAE are sprinting forward, others risk falling behind – locked in outdated bureaucratic routines and legacy decision-making. Some countries will hesitate. Some will worry about legitimacy, ethics, or optics. But others will look at the UAE and say: this is the new blueprint – AI will not replace human leadership. But it will augment it, challenge it and sharpen it.
In a world of rising complexity, that might just be our greatest advantage.
Company profile
Company: Rent Your Wardrobe
Date started: May 2021
Founder: Mamta Arora
Based: Dubai
Sector: Clothes rental subscription
Stage: Bootstrapped, self-funded
Abramovich London
A Kensington Palace Gardens house with 15 bedrooms is valued at more than £150 million.
A three-storey penthouse at Chelsea Waterfront bought for £22 million.
Steel company Evraz drops more than 10 per cent in trading after UK officials said it was potentially supplying the Russian military.
Sale of Chelsea Football Club is now impossible.
In numbers
Number of Chinese tourists coming to UAE in 2017 was... 1.3m
Alibaba’s new ‘Tech Town’ in Dubai is worth... $600m
China’s investment in the MIddle East in 2016 was... $29.5bn
The world’s most valuable start-up in 2018, TikTok, is valued at... $75bn
Boost to the UAE economy of 5G connectivity will be... $269bn
Lexus LX700h specs
Engine: 3.4-litre twin-turbo V6 plus supplementary electric motor
Power: 464hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 790Nm from 2,000-3,600rpm
Transmission: 10-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 11.7L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh590,000
The Florida Project
Director: Sean Baker
Starring: Bria Vinaite, Brooklynn Prince, Willem Dafoe
Four stars
PAKISTAN v SRI LANKA
Twenty20 International series
Thu Oct 26, 1st T20I, Abu Dhabi
Fri Oct 27, 2nd T20I, Abu Dhabi
Sun Oct 29, 3rd T20I, Lahore
Tickets are available at www.q-tickets.com
Sri Lanka World Cup squad
Dimuth Karunaratne (c), Lasith Malinga, Angelo Mathews, Thisara Perera, Kusal Perera, Dhananjaya de Silva, Kusal Mendis, Isuru Udana, Milinda Siriwardana, Avishka Fernando, Jeevan Mendis, Lahiru Thirimanne, Jeffrey Vandersay, Nuwan Pradeep, Suranga Lakmal.
Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
UK's plans to cut net migration
Under the UK government’s proposals, migrants will have to spend 10 years in the UK before being able to apply for citizenship.
Skilled worker visas will require a university degree, and there will be tighter restrictions on recruitment for jobs with skills shortages.
But what are described as "high-contributing" individuals such as doctors and nurses could be fast-tracked through the system.
Language requirements will be increased for all immigration routes to ensure a higher level of English.
Rules will also be laid out for adult dependants, meaning they will have to demonstrate a basic understanding of the language.
The plans also call for stricter tests for colleges and universities offering places to foreign students and a reduction in the time graduates can remain in the UK after their studies from two years to 18 months.
Volvo ES90 Specs
Engine: Electric single motor (96kW), twin motor (106kW) and twin motor performance (106kW)
Power: 333hp, 449hp, 680hp
Torque: 480Nm, 670Nm, 870Nm
On sale: Later in 2025 or early 2026, depending on region
Price: Exact regional pricing TBA
The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Strait of Hormuz
Fujairah is a crucial hub for fuel storage and is just outside the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route linking Middle East oil producers to markets in Asia, Europe, North America and beyond.
The strait is 33 km wide at its narrowest point, but the shipping lane is just three km wide in either direction. Almost a fifth of oil consumed across the world passes through the strait.
Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the strait, a move that would risk inviting geopolitical and economic turmoil.
Last month, Iran issued a new warning that it would block the strait, if it was prevented from using the waterway following a US decision to end exemptions from sanctions for major Iranian oil importers.
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
