Building trust in AI: The UAE’s journey to a digital cognitive future

As artificial intelligence diffuses across a broad spectrum of applications, from automation enabler to autonomous actor, to co-pilot equipping people with the capability to perform new tasks, enterprises must make trust a key part of their strategy. Balancing and maintaining trust will be essential to the success and unlocking the potential of AI.

As AI systems become more integrated into workplace processes, transparency about how these systems work and make decisions is critical. Employees must also understand how decisions are made to trust AI systems.

Ensuring AI systems are free from bias is essential, because if employees believe AI systems are biased or unfair, this can erode trust in the workplace.

The fear of job displacement because of AI can also affect trust – therefore, clear communication about how AI can be used to reshape human job responsibilities in evolving workplaces is vital to mitigating employee concerns. Trust in AI ultimately hinges on robust data privacy measures and clear policies on data usage.

Employees should be made aware of the benefits AI brings to them and to their organisation, how it will impact their roles, and what safeguards are in place to ensure fairness and accuracy. Investing in training to help boost their ability to collaborate with AI and use it to enhance their work is crucial.

Impact of AI across sectors

The Accenture Technology Vision 2025 report underscores AI’s transformative role in fostering organizational autonomy, pointing out that trust is emerging as the linchpin in unlocking its full potential. The report reveals that while 89 per cent of global executives believe AI will transform their industries, only 32 per cent have comprehensive governance frameworks in place.

In the UAE, this gap is particularly noteworthy, as the country has invested over $24bn in AI initiatives since launching its National AI Strategy 2031. This discrepancy between ambition and governance infrastructure presents both a challenge and an opportunity for UAE enterprises.

With trust emerging as the cornerstone of successful AI implementation, organizations across the UAE are navigating the delicate balance between rapid innovation and responsible deployment. Findings of the survey in the UAE point out that 65 per cent of executives believe AI’s full impact depends on establishing a foundation of trust.

At the same time, leaders in the UAE face challenges in balancing innovation with trust, with 76 per cent acknowledging AI’s urgency for reinvention while struggling to integrate AI agents effectively.

Also, only 20 per cent of UAE firms are proactively redesigning digital systems for the introduction of AI agents. This is well behind the global average of 77 per cent.

The UAE’s slower adoption of AI agents and reliance on legacy systems risk stifling growth and highlight the need for strategic trust frameworks and workforce readiness to harness AI’s autonomy-driven future.

According to its ambitious “We the UAE 2031” vision, the UAE is looking to achieve 100 percent reliance on AI for government services and data analysis by that year.

Today, 75 per cent of workers across businesses in the UAE are reportedly using generative AI. Without a doubt, how people interact with technology, as a copilot and by expanding voice assistant capabilities; and onward to robotics, to cars, and to health care will likely set the stage for the next phase of development.

The arrival of agentic AI and ultimately, generalised intelligence, will make this scenario more complex.

Enterprises need to understand that they are working with a thinking intelligence here – building what will become the organization’s digital cognitive brain, a unified AI system that learns, adapts, and orchestrates across an organisation – offering UAE enterprises a compelling path forward.

Unlike fragmented AI implementations, this holistic approach mirrors the UAE’s own centralised AI governance structure under the National Program for Artificial Intelligence.

For UAE organisations to fully realise the potential of AI-driven reinvention, the trust factor must be addressed systematically.

The above mentioned report indicates that companies prioritising transparent AI governance see 32 per cent higher returns on their AI investments globally.

Governance framework for AI

The UAE’s Corporate Governance Framework for AI, developed by the AI Office in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, provides enterprises with a roadmap to build trust-enhancing mechanisms.

Encouraging UAE organisations to implement explainable AI systems that provide transparency in decision-making, the framework recommends human-in-the-loop processes to maintain accountability, constantly monitoring for bias and ethical considerations, and robust data governance protocols.

Early adopters like Etisalat by e& have demonstrated this approach through their AI-powered customer service platform, which explains the reasoning behind recommendations and maintains human oversight for sensitive decisions, leading to a documented 24 per cent increase in customer satisfaction scores.

Organisations must recognise that trust and innovation are not competing priorities but complementary forces. For instance, the digital cognitive brain concept offers a framework for implementing AI that learns continuously while maintaining transparent governance.

The UAE’s AI Ethics Advisory Board, established in 2023, provides a national-level compass for navigating uncharted waters. Its recent guidelines on AI applications in healthcare and financial services offer sector-specific trust frameworks that UAE enterprises can adopt.

For these enterprises, the imperative is clear: build trust-enhancing mechanisms into AI systems from the beginning rather than retrofitting them later to mitigate risks and create a competitive advantage through increased stakeholder confidence.

As we look toward 2031 and beyond, the UAE’s approach to embedding trust within its digital cognitive infrastructure may well become the template that other nations follow.

The writer is the CEO at Accenture’s Middle East.