'You won’t be able to miss them’: robots will soon be everywhere in the UAE

Abu Dhabi- Autonomous delivery vehicles and robotaxis are already rolling out across the UAE, and Faisal Al Bannai, Advisor to the UAE President and Secretary General of the Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), said at the opening of AI Everything 2026 that cities will soon treat advanced robotics as everyday infrastructure.

“We will have 1000s of taxis operating in the UAE, this time next year, we will have thousands outside China, we will be the largest deployer. After China” he said, while acknowledging that geopolitical complexity, regulatory concerns and safety risks may remain as obstacles.

Opening the Summit to a packed main stage, H.E. Ahmed Tamim Hisham Al Kuttab, Chairman of DGE, delivered a keynote addressing the defining questions of AI governance, infrastructure, and scaling at national scale.

Where does UAE have an advantage?

Al Kuttab, laid out Abu Dhabi’s case to be among the shapers of the AI century, anchored in the ambition to become the world’s first AI-native government by 2027.

 He said societies that begin building the foundations for AI today will widen their lead each year, while those that delay will find it increasingly difficult to close the gap. He said Abu Dhabi and the UAE had already established those foundations by bringing together the three elements sought by entrepreneurs and businesses: computing power, capital and customers willing to be early adopters.

 Al Bannai added the UAE’s advantage lies in regulators who are willing to understand the risks, make decisions quickly and act with agility. He said clients valued that responsiveness more than the underlying AI model.

As AI advances amid geopolitical competition and gaps in safety oversight, the UAE is investing in smaller, specialised models tailored to specific sectors. “We will be much more focused in providing practical use cases that can be propelled going forward,” he added.

Pragmatism over hype

Al Bannai described AI as a core state capability, arguing that nations with their own computing power, models and talent would shape the century, while those reliant on borrowed technology would follow. He urged the audience to focus on solving problems rather than getting caught up in terminology, and voiced scepticism about the hype surrounding “physical AI” and “physical SI”.

 True ownership, he argued, requires the ability to modify software, examine how it works and test it independently. “If the brain inside the AI is not something you built, how will you be able to understand the limitations?” he asked, adding that this understanding was essential to creating effective circuit breakers.

With technological development unlikely to slow, he emphasised the need for clarity about how AI systems are built and the importance of independent benchmarks against which their security can be tested. He also emphasised the role of the government both as regulators and builders.

AI Everything 2026, hosted by the Abu Dhabi Department of Government Enablement (DGE), also witnessed visitors from across the globe communicating with humanoids and even raising answers to one question, “what’s the most critical mission AI should solve?”