Anyone who has ever waited for an official stamp knows that processing an ordinary permit can take days or even weeks. Abu Dhabi wants to put an end to that. The capital of the United Arab Emirates has joined forces with OpenAI, the American company behind ChatGPT, and has begun teaching artificial intelligence to read government regulations. The emirate has set itself an ambitious goal. By 2027, it wants to have the world’s first public administration built from the ground up around artificial intelligence.
The entire initiative began with Monday’s meeting between Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The two men discussed how modern technology could accelerate the transformation of public administration and support key sectors of the local economy. Following the meeting, the Crown Prince witnessed the signing of four agreements covering government authorities, energy, investment, and education. Altman praised the Emirates, saying they were setting a bold benchmark for how artificial intelligence should operate in both the public and private sectors.
Laws Converted into Machine Language
The project attracting the most attention is called Machine-Readable Government, or MRG for short. Its principle is surprisingly simple.
Government authorities follow numerous laws, regulations, and procedures in their work. They are written by people for people, so computers cannot process them on their own. Abu Dhabi is therefore rewriting selected regulations into a form that machines can also understand. The system then takes a specific application, compares it with the rules, and proposes a decision. For each result, it also shows the exact provision of the regulation on which it was based.
The rules themselves do not change; only the way government authorities apply them does. The system can handle routine cases on its own, around the clock without interruption. People can thus receive within minutes answers they previously had to wait several days for.
Ahmed Tamim Hisham Al Kuttab, head of the local Department of Government Enablement (DGE), explained why they chose this particular approach. According to him, simply grafting artificial intelligence onto old procedures is not enough. The much harder task was to make the regulations themselves intelligent, and that is precisely what MRG does.
A standardized format for the rules offers another advantage. Officials will finally be able to see clearly where regulations issued by different authorities overlap or even contradict one another. They can first test proposed changes in a simulated environment and determine how they would affect other rules before they take effect.
People Will Have the Final Say
The idea of a machine deciding on applications may cause concern for many people. Abu Dhabi therefore emphasizes that officials are not going anywhere. They set the rules themselves, review complex cases, and continue to bear full responsibility for every final decision. Artificial intelligence prepares the supporting information for them but does not take over decision-making. The system also has clear boundaries. It may not independently make decisions on serious matters that would significantly affect people’s rights, their entitlements, or their access to essential services.
The project is no longer just on paper. The first pilot is already operating in a live environment at the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority, where it helps inspect food imports. The technical side is being handled in cooperation with Inception42, part of the G42 group. The pilot produced a tool capable of converting conventionally written regulations into automated checks, which can also be used elsewhere.
Additional areas are expected to follow gradually, including building permits, business licenses for companies and freelancers, data access, human resources, and public procurement. Official announcements do not yet indicate how much time and work the system will save in practice.
Data Remains in the Emirates
Data protection is a major concern with projects of this kind. Computing for the government system does not take place in the United States but directly in the Emirates, using graphics processing units in local data centers. The United Arab Emirates has thus become the first country in the Middle East where OpenAI’s GPT models run on infrastructure located within the country. Protection is governed by local cybersecurity rules, and everything is subject to Abu Dhabi law.
All data generated by the system belongs to the emirate’s government. OpenAI may not use it to train its models, and clear policies determine how it must be stored, used, and deleted.
Billions for Government, Schools, and Business
MRG is one of the pillars of Abu Dhabi’s 2025–2027 digital strategy, into which the emirate will invest 13 billion dirhams, or approximately 3.5 billion dollars. The government intends to use this money to strengthen digital infrastructure and fully automate all administrative procedures. By 2027, the strategy is expected to contribute more than 24 billion dirhams to the local economy and create over five thousand jobs. The new system will be integrated with the TAMM app, through which people can access more than 1,200 public and private services. According to the government, 40 authorities already use artificial intelligence, and all government employees have completed training.
The Emirates is not promoting artificial intelligence only within government authorities. At the beginning of the month, Abu Dhabi launched the AiNative educational program with OpenAI and Microsoft, which aims to teach twenty thousand government employees and members of the general public how to work with AI. Participants will learn, for example, how to use ChatGPT to manage their personal finances, run a small business, or look for work. In September, the United Arab Emirates government approved artificial intelligence education in all public and private schools, and 22 thousand teachers are to be prepared to teach the new subject matter. Inception42 signed a five-year agreement with OpenAI under which they will jointly deploy advanced artificial intelligence in government authorities, large enterprises, and schools.
The remaining two agreements focus on business. The state-owned energy company ADNOC became the first company in the energy sector to deploy OpenAI’s most advanced technologies. It will use them in its operations as well as for investment and business decision-making, with the models running on servers located directly in the Emirates. Through this initiative, ADNOC aims to achieve its goal of becoming the world’s most technologically advanced energy company.
The Mubadala investment fund, meanwhile, agreed with Inception42 and OpenAI that artificial intelligence will assist it with investment analysis, identifying new opportunities, and assessing risks.
Sources: techafricanews.com, mediaoffice.abudha
