Abu Dhabi wants AI to anticipate before people ask

• Automatic renewals and registrations
• Fully AI-native government by 2027
• ‘Give people back the time’

Abu Dhabi wants to make applying for government services a thing of the past by using artificial intelligence to anticipate what residents might need before they ask.

The emirate is developing a proactive model that brings support to the public rather than waiting for a request – including identifying requirements they may not have even considered.

Services such as car registration can be handled automatically through a local government app, while officials are exploring whether passport renewals could happen without having to initiate a request.

Ruba Youssef Al Hassan, director general of Abu Dhabi’s Department of Government Enablement (DGE), said the aim was to “give people back the time” they spent interacting with the administration.

She has been a beneficiary of the approach. After receiving a traffic fine, Al Hassan was called by Abu Dhabi’s service platform Tamm, which had detected that a radar may have malfunctioned after an unusual number of motorists were ticketed.

A call centre worker offered to contest the fine and it was subsequently removed. “Imagine a government that’s calling you to save you money,” she told AGBI at the AI Everything Abu Dhabi summit.

Capital venture

The Emirati capital aims to become the world’s first fully AI-native government by 2027, moving beyond digitising services to redesigning how government interacts with its people.

Tamm brings together more than 1,170 state and private-sector services. Al Hassan described it as “designed around your life, not around departments”.

People can set up a business, obtain permits to build a home and check their children’s school attendance and reports. They can also view their credit score and shares held in Abu Dhabi-listed companies, book a padel court or sign up for a beekeeping course.

Al Hassan uses AutoGov, a tool within Tamm, to manage her annual car registration. It stores preferences including insurance requirements and identifies suitable options before notifying her when payment is due.

She said the same approach could extend to passports. “Why should it be something that I even have to set or remember or even initiate?”

Becoming AI-native did not mean removing the human touch, she said. In sensitive situations such as losing a loved one, the first contact would be a personal call offering condolences.

AI is used behind the scenes to assess government call-centre workers on their tone, choice of words and empathy. It can detect changes in a caller’s tone and alert a supervisor if the conversation deteriorates.

During the regional conflict, Al Hassan said Tamm maintained “zero downtime” throughout 90 days of attacks.

“If anything, it taught us that preparedness is the most important thing.”

Upskilling at pace

The Abu Dhabi government on Wednesday launched AiNative, a training programme developed by DGE with OpenAI, Microsoft and Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence.

It aims to train 20,000 government employees by the end of this year, with a free programme for the public to follow.

People will be taught practical uses of AI including managing personal finances, running a small business, and finding a job.

Further reading:

• Abu Dhabi’s Inception42 adds AI to boardroom decisions
• Presight targets 50% overseas revenue with ‘matchmaking’ push
• Anthropic IPO shines light on Gulf’s AI exposure

Al Hassan said government employees were building and testing their own AI agents, with training moving into specialised tools for finance, communications and human resources.

She compared basic AI competence to a “driving licence” for working in government.

As AI takes on more routine work, Al Hassan said critical thinking, judgment and intuition would become increasingly important.

Success would be measured not by how much AI the government deployed, but whether it retained public trust and improved quality of life.

“It’s not about enriching ourselves with just more and more and more AI,” she said. “Have we been able to do it while still maintaining our people’s trust, while still maintaining our people’s satisfaction of life and happiness?”