AI is national sovereignty like defence or cybersecurity, says UAE minister at Gitex

Dubai: The UAE treats artificial intelligence as a matter of national sovereignty, with budget allocations on par with defence and cybersecurity, the country's Minister of Economy, Abdullah Bin Touq Al Marri, said on Monday.

“AI is a state of sovereignty. Like you spend budgets on defence, on cyber, you have to spend budget on AI. AI is a sovereignty for every single nation,” he said at Gitex Global.

The remark from Al Marri mirrors how the UAE views AI as a core part of national policy, not a technology experiment. It has already woven AI into its diversification strategy, public services, and legal frameworks as part of efforts to build a non-oil economy.

Non-oil economy at center of AI growth

Non-oil sectors now make up 77.3 per cent of the UAE’s economy, compared with 69 per cent five years ago, according to official data. “Our economy, like you said five years ago, was 69 per cent non-oil. When we started after Covid, today we are about 77.3 per cent non-oil,” Al Marri said. The government’s target is to reach 80 per cent within five years.

Growth in finance, manufacturing, and technology has supported that shift. The IMF expects non-oil GDP to expand by about 4.5 per cent this year, led by trade, logistics, and investment flows. Al Marri said much of the current progress has been driven by digital infrastructure, with AI becoming a key component of productivity.

The ministry has already begun embedding AI into its operations. A new system for trademark registration allows users to check whether a brand name already exists, reducing processing time from days to seconds. “

You can drop your current trademark, and it will tell you how close it is to any other trademark in the database,” he said. “The AI does it for you now in milliseconds and gives you the answer on the spot.”

He said the government has also amended parts of the Commercial Transactions Law to include AI references, marking one of the first steps in integrating artificial intelligence into regulatory systems.

Talent is "oil of the economy"

Al Marri has described talent as the “oil of the economy,” saying it underpins every element of AI development. “Talent is the most important aspect, because you might have the beautiful ideas, but you don’t have the right talent to actually process it,” he said.

The UAE has expanded long-term visa schemes to attract professionals and researchers, and it has established the Mohammed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence to train local specialists. The country now ranks among the top five markets globally for AI talent, according to LinkedIn’s 2024 Global AI Talent Report.

AI’s growth is also being tied to the UAE’s clean-energy plans. Data centres and computing infrastructure are being powered increasingly by renewable and nuclear energy.

Projects led by Masdar and ENEC are expected to supply most of the required capacity by 2030. The minister said global partnerships, with Oracle, Siemens, Huawei and Abu Dhabi-based G42, will expand the UAE’s AI capability while ensuring energy efficiency. “We are not great in building walls. We are great in building bridges,” he said. “Use the UAE as your bridge. UAE doesn’t do walls, we connect the world.”

Addressing new risks

While AI drives growth, it also brings new challenges. Al Marri said that AI will inevitably reshape the job market, but compared the transition to earlier industrial revolutions that improved efficiency and created new roles. “What we used to do in the past might take many days; we might do it now in five minutes. Humans by nature will never stop,” he said.

Meanwhile, Al Marri said the real challenge is internal readiness, how fast the UAE can develop the systems, skills, and infrastructure to support AI at scale. “It’s a race within us, how our infrastructure is ready, how our talent is being groomed, how our thinking and strategies are being aligned,” he said.

For the UAE, that race defines the next phase of its economy, one measured less by oil output and more by data, innovation, and the human capacity to use both wisely.