The United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced a plan to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) for writing new laws and revising existing legislation, advancing beyond other governments. According to the Financial Times, the UAE is the first country to fully introduce an AI legislative system and apply AI at the stage of legal proposals.
"This new legislative system, powered by artificial intelligence, will change the way we create laws, making the process faster and more accurate," said Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, according to the Financial Times.
To oversee the use of AI in the legislative field, the UAE established the Regulatory Intelligence Office, aiming to expedite the process and enhance accuracy. The office will employ AI-based tools to improve efficiency and accelerate the legislative issuance cycle by up to 70%, allowing policymakers to work on more bills simultaneously and propose regular updates.
The new legislative intelligence system involves building the largest legislative database of federal and local legislations, linking them to judicial rulings, operations, services, and systems, and interacting with users. The database aims to enable AI to track the impact of laws on citizens and the economy, supporting more accurate and effective decision-making.
"The UAE's plan is unique because it includes using artificial intelligence to predict potential legal amendments, which could save costs usually borne by governments to pay law firms to review legislation," said Vincent Straub, a researcher at the University of Oxford. However, several researchers, including Straub, warn that AI still suffers from so-called "hallucinations"—it can generate incorrect or incoherent information.
Experts are concerned that AI's reliability is not yet sufficient for major legislative tasks, such as drafting bills and predicting legal effects. Researchers emphasized the importance of establishing safeguards for AI and human oversight, as AI could suggest policies that do not consider their practical application in society. "The logic of AI can sometimes be incomprehensible to humans, and AI could propose something really, really weird that makes sense to a machine but may absolutely make no sense to really implement it out there for real in a human society," a researcher noted.
The UAE has heavily invested in AI, including the establishment of MGX, a dedicated investment vehicle that has backed significant funds like the $30 billion BlackRock AI-infrastructure fund. The Abu Dhabi government established MGX last year and is partnering with Microsoft and BlackRock to create a $30 billion AI investment fund, which has already backed an AI-infrastructure fund.
The plan, called "AI-Driven Legislation," surpasses what has been implemented elsewhere, as it actively suggests changes to current laws through data processing. The approach, characterized by state media as "legislation with AI support," aims to improve efficiency and facilitate proposed reforms by analyzing large-scale data from legislations, judicial decisions, and public administration.
The Intelligence Office will deliver data-driven insights to assist legislators, determining which laws need to be drafted or improved, while working with federal and local entities and the private sector to build this system.
Researchers have noted that the UAE's AI legislative initiative may face challenges, including data fragmentation and the absence of instant governance tools. Experts warn that implementing AI in the legislative system carries risks, including biased training data and the inability to interpret laws as humans do.
Despite these concerns, the UAE intends to connect with leading global research institutions to adjust laws according to the country's unique situation while following international legislative practices. The Intelligence Office will be connected to global policy research centers and monitor global changes in real time to determine their impact on the country's legislations.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum explained that "the AI system will analyze vast data to track the daily impact of laws on citizens and the economy and regularly propose law amendments." He affirmed that "the new system of legislations based on artificial intelligence will bring about a qualitative leap in the cycle of legislation, its speed, and accuracy, ensuring our national legislative superiority and keeping our laws in line with the best practices and the highest ambitions, and in a manner that suits the uniqueness of our accelerating developmental experience."
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.