UAE Cabinet forms Artificial Intelligence Council

The ten-member council will oversee the integration of AI in government and education

The UAE Cabinet has formed a council for artificial intelligence (AI) that will oversee AI integration in government departments and the education sector.

The ten-member UAE Council for Artificial Intelligence will be chaired by Omar Al Olama, the 27-year-old who was appointed Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence in October’s Cabinet reshuffle. The council includes representatives from every emirate.

The council will identify how and where AI can be incorporated in government, what supporting infrastructure it requires and investigate its incorporation at different levels of education.

The formation of the AI council was one of five themes outlined in the government’s AI strategy launched last October. Goals of the AI strategy include crash prevention and the reduction of traffic, disease prevention and increased forestation.

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State news agency Wam cited the council’s creation as a step to achieving the UAE Centennial 2071 project, which has the goal of making the Emirates the ‘best country in the world’.

It’s believed that by 2071 AI will already be at least as intelligent as humans and able to surpass humans at most cognitive tasks.

Artificial general intelligence is at least twenty years in the future but is widely expected to be achieved before 2060. Its associated challenges are expected to include job loss through automation, privacy management and an arms race in autonomous weapons.

In the long term, scientists are concerned with aligning AI and human goals.