The UAE has made its ambition to be at the forefront of using artificial intelligence in the public and private sectors abundantly clear.
This month alone there have been a number of announcements from authorities about how they are pushing AI into realms such as tax audits and customer service.
For some, AI may bring to mind chatbots on bank or shopping websites and their occasionally clumsy attempts to deal with queries.
But agentic AI appears likely, analysts say, to transform how services are delivered and how companies operate – with huge implications for the world of work.
“If I’m providing government services, rather than just taking existing infrastructure and replacing humans with AI, what I should be thinking about is 'could each citizen have a personal AI concierge who had access to all of the different government websites?'” said Prof Mark Daley, chief AI officer at Western University in Canada.
“So instead of my having to navigate different websites and make separate phone calls, I can go to my concierge and say, ‘hey, I need to renew my driver’s licence and I need to change my healthcare programme,’ whatever it is, and the concierge can make these things happen.”
Such a scenario could become reality within a decade or sooner, he suggested.
The UAE already has a track record of successfully powering government services with AI, such as the TAMM app in Abu Dhabi.
Having set a goal that within two years half of government services will be provided by AI, UAE officials have unleashed AI agents to manage tax auditing, technical support and procurement, while 80,000 state workers are being trained in AI.
At the same time, Dubai is introducing training programmes to encourage the private sector to embrace agentic AI.
Dr Xavier Fresquet, head of the Sorbonne Centre for Artificial Intelligence at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi, said that with AI carrying out government functions, interaction would “be mediated by agents capable of understanding the texture of the ordinary world”.
“For instance, a citizen won’t just receive a generic notification, they will interact with an agentic system that understands their specific context – be it a professional transition or a family event – and co-ordinates across departments to provide a seamless, proactive response,” he said.
“The goal is an invisible government that amplifies human autonomy, rather than replaces it with a rigid, automated script.”
Faster and more personalised
Interactions with government will become faster, more proactive and increasingly personalised, with no more multi-step processes with human interactions at each stage, indicated Amr Kamel, chief executive of Microsoft UAE.
“Think of a permit application that identifies missing documents before you submit them, or a health inquiry that routes itself based on context without the caller needing to explain their situation multiple times,” he said.
According to Thomas Pramotedham, chief executive of Presight, an Abu Dhabi-based AI company, the technology is already used heavily by UAE authorities. The company says it processes two million decisions a day within the UAE government.
“The UAE has framed this as a redesign of government itself, positioning autonomous systems as the next phase of AI-native government,” Mr Pramotedham said.
As well as an “operational layer” of AI, in which high-volume rules-based tasks, such as document processing, are automated, he highlighted agentic AI’s involvement in more complex tasks in sectors including healthcare, where it might co-ordinate patient flows or optimise ambulance routing.
“In urban management, agents can run simulations and predictive models that support more proactive decision-making rather than reactive crisis management,” he said. “These are not theoretical applications, they are already operating within critical systems across Abu Dhabi today.”
Advocates say dealing with human-like agentic AI should be easy for consumers, including those who typically struggle with technology.
Agentic AI is likely to play a role in government decision-making even at the highest level. Rather than having countless staff working on a policy brief for a minister, such as by consulting reports and contacting experts, a string of agents could carry out the work, perhaps taking 20 minutes instead of a day, said Prof Daley.
“Not that the humans don’t still have a role but you can speed up the policymaking cycle, which is probably necessary for an era where we’re going to have to make policy about this technology, which is doing more and more,” he said.
Private matters
Dubai has highlighted the importance of agentic AI in the private sector, with Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, announcing training programmes for businesses.
“There’s been a drive across the emirates and particularly Dubai, through the chambers, to facilitate or orchestrate how private enterprise can become more agentic AI-native in their operations and their services and their interactions with businesses, with government and with citizens or residents,” said Dr Raymond Khoury, partner and public sector practice lead at consultancy Arthur D Little in Dubai.
With agentic AI forecast to be an engine for growth, encouraging more companies to use the technology and perhaps gain an advantage over competitors abroad, it could stimulate the economy.
“This is going to be a huge economic engine for the next era,” Prof Daley said. “If I were governing, I would want to encourage that because that’s probably the future of the firm, or one of the futures of the firm, so I would want more of those AI-native firms in my jurisdiction bringing revenue to my country.”
Prioritising certain tasks for agentic AI, while leaving others to be managed more heavily by people, is needed to maintain public confidence in the technology, Dr Khoury said.
Also, to ensure trust, he said legal guidelines around agentic AI and high levels of cybersecurity were essential.
Impact on jobs
Major companies have been cutting roles and citing AI as a reason, among them Amazon, which recently announced it was shedding 14,000 corporate roles, and Standard Chartered, which is letting go of 7,000 staff.
“Within a year or two, any task that can be done by a human sitting at a computer with a keyboard and a mouse will be able to be done by an AI agent,” Prof Daley said.
This might mean writing emails, filling out forms, or working with spreadsheet programmes such as Microsoft Excel, so many typical white-collar jobs will be automated.
But, despite such changes, some HR analysts say companies will continue to need to employ large numbers of people, only in different types of roles.
“From an HR perspective, the rise of agentic AI is likely to reshape workplaces less through outright replacement of people and more through the redesign of roles, responsibilities and decision-making structures,” said Nikhil D’Souza, general manager at HR company Nathan & Nathan in Dubai.
“We are moving into a phase where employees may increasingly supervise, validate and collaborate with AI systems, rather than carry out purely administrative or repetitive tasks themselves.”
Mr D’Souza said organisations would need to reskill and upskill employees so they could work alongside AI.
“Skills such as critical thinking, emotional intelligence, judgment, relationship management and oversight will become even more valuable because these remain areas where human capability is difficult to replicate fully,” he said.
Retaining public trust will require human oversight in areas such as employee relations and sensitive decision-making, he said, warning of a risk of organisations relying on automation “in situations where empathy, human interaction and contextual judgment are essential”.
Zubin Mistry, founder and executive producer of Singularity UAE, a Dubai-based film production company, said suggestions that AI could replace creative thinking misunderstood “what creativity actually is”.
“AI needs guidance, direction,” he said. “It needs taste and a human perspective. The machine is only as good as the person behind it.”
