Dubai is moving faster than almost any city on earth to cement its place as the world's leading artificial intelligence hub. At the inaugural AI Retreat, held at the Museum of the Future in June 2024, UAE Minister for Artificial Intelligence Omar Sultan AlOlama laid out the emirate's audacious plan — a strategic vision for AI that spans the next 185 years, beginning immediately.
Dubai's 185-Year AI Vision
More than 2,500 participants from government agencies and the private sector gathered at the AI Retreat to discuss how to govern AI, build talent pipelines, and develop the infrastructure needed to deploy artificial intelligence at scale — addressing challenges from individual productivity to planetary-level problems.
AlOlama drew a direct parallel between Dubai's physical transformation and its AI ambitions. The city's infrastructure, first developed in 1858, took 185 years to reach world-class status. His message: the same long-term commitment is now being applied to AI.
"In Dubai, we set an example and we do not wait for change to happen, but rather, change happens," AlOlama said, emphasising the UAE's proactive posture on AI adoption and advancement.
Chief AI Officers and the Million-Engineer Target
Dubai has moved beyond rhetoric into concrete institutional reform. The emirate has appointed 22 Chief AI Officers to oversee government departments — embedding AI leadership at the highest levels of public administration.
Alongside this, the UAE has set an ambitious target: educating one million AI engineers and specialists. These initiatives are central to the strategy of attracting the world's top technology firms and AI talent to Dubai, reinforcing its competitive position in the global AI race.
UAE's Global AI Talent Rankings
AlOlama highlighted a striking measure of the UAE's progress: the country now ranks third globally for AI talent attraction, behind only Luxembourg and Switzerland. Regionally, it has risen from 11th place in 2021 to first — a transformation documented in a report produced by LinkedIn in collaboration with Stanford University.
The UAE also jumped from 20th to 15th globally in the ranking for skilled AI personnel within a single year. AlOlama stressed that AI is not a distant aspiration — it is already reshaping the UAE's economy and society today, just as the city's physical infrastructure has been under continuous development for nearly two centuries.
Inaugural AI Retreat: Governance, Infrastructure, and Investment
The AI Retreat brought together more than 1,000 decision-makers, government officials, business leaders, and representatives from the world's leading technology companies. Sessions covered the critical pillars of a functioning AI ecosystem: policy and regulation, legal frameworks, governance models, data centre infrastructure, and the financing and research environments that enable long-term innovation.
The event was organised by the Dubai Centre for Artificial Intelligence and the National Program for Artificial Intelligence, held under the patronage of Crown Prince of Dubai HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Sheikh Hamdan subsequently announced that the AI Retreat would become an annual fixture in Dubai's calendar.
