Speed, autonomy, people first: Inside the UAE's radical AI government vision

The United Arab Emirates has just raised the bar for what a government can be.

Under the directives of the President of the UAE, a landmark new government model has been launched with a single, striking headline: within two years, 50% of all government sectors, services and operations will run on Agentic AI, artificial intelligence that does not merely assist, but analyses, decides, executes and improves in real time.

If achieved, the UAE would become the first government in the world to operate at this scale through autonomous systems. It is an ambition without precedent.

The announcement marks a fundamental shift in how the UAE conceives of artificial intelligence in public administration. "AI is no longer a tool," the directive states plainly. "It analyses, decides, executes, and improves in real time. It will become our executive partner to enhance services, accelerate decisions, and raise efficiency."

This is not incremental digitisation. It is a wholesale reimagining of how government works,  with AI embedded not at the margins of decision-making, but at its core.

The transformation comes with a two-year deadline and equally clear metrics: speed of adoption, quality of implementation, and mastery of AI in redesigning government work. There will be no ambiguity about whether targets are being met.

Oversight has been entrusted to Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, with a dedicated taskforce chaired by Mohammad Al Gergawi driving day-to-day execution, a signal that this initiative sits at the very top of the UAE's national agenda.

Investing in people

In a move that distinguishes this plan from purely technocratic visions of AI governance, every federal employee will be trained to master AI, building what the UAE describes as "one of the world's strongest capabilities in AI-driven government."

The underlying philosophy is deliberate: technology accelerates, but people come first. The goal, as the directive puts it, is "a government that is faster, more responsive, and more impactful », not a government that has replaced its people, but one that has equipped them.

The UAE has long positioned itself as a laboratory for bold governance experiments. But this announcement is of a different order. If the two-year timeline holds, Abu Dhabi will not simply have modernised its public sector, it will have written a new playbook for what 21st-century government looks like.