UAE launches initiative to develop responsible AI policies in private sector

Omar Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence and Wasim Khan, Advisory Services Leader across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region exchange memorandum of understanding.-Photo by Neeraj Murali

The UAE has launched a new initiative that will help develop legislation, policies and initiatives for a "responsible and efficient" adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) within the private sector.
Launched by the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the initiative is called 'Think AI' and will see a series of round tables between government accelerators and the private sector, where key areas of improvement in various sectors will be discussed.
In the long run, one of the elements the programme aims to ensure is to measure the impact of AI implementation on human job losses in the country.
"No one can pinpoint a specific number of jobs lost, but we need to be agile enough to be able to understand what the impact is and what we need to do what is right for the future generations. At the end of the day, we don't need to become a society led by smart algorithms, where the humans are doing nothing - this is not what we want. The second thing is, actually, 90 per cent of jobs are not critical jobs for the survival of humans," Omar Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, said on the sidelines of the launch.
"This initiative is actually a spin-off of another initiative that was launched probably 15 or 20 years ago, called 'Think Dubai', which brought the private sector academia and the public sector together to talk about what are the policies and initiatives that can be launched to improve the ecosystem.This initiative seeks to do the same thing for AI. We're going to bring the private sector to help us understand whether things are working or not, how we can do our job better and how we can further enhance our leadership position regionally and globally."
The Ministry of AI signed a MoU with a firm called 'EY' on March 6 to launch the initiative. The company runs similar initiatives in 18 other countries.
The five round tables will be held at the Emirates Towers over a period of time and will include topics such as attracting and fostering talents, enhancing the adoption of AI, regulation and governance, suitable infrastructure and national standers. Olama said that AI will help the "fast deployment" of solutions that are required by the private sector.
"If we're talking about healthcare diagnostics, if there is an issue that most healthcare companies are facing in the country which would help us overcome the disease primarily, we will accelerate that," he said. "In education, if there is something 9 million people in the country or more will actually feel is going to touch on their lives on a direct level, we're going to focus on that as well. So we're looking on the most high and positive impact."
sarwat@khaleejtimes.com