UAE Sets Decision Boundaries for Government AI Agents

The United Arab Emirates is pursuing a national Agentic AI strategy that would move artificial intelligence beyond answering questions to planning and carrying out government tasks. The initiative matters because deploying autonomous systems in public administration raises difficult questions about accountability, oversight and the lawful exercise of state authority, particularly when an AI model’s output could directly affect citizens or government operations.

The UAE aims to have AI models handle half of federal government operations and services within two years. Officials are now developing a classification framework to determine which decisions autonomous systems may execute directly and which must remain recommendations for human review. The work marks a critical implementation stage, establishing boundaries for machine authority before Agentic AI is deployed broadly across the federal government.