What comes after AI adoption for SMEs in the UAE?

The UAE leads the world in AI adoption, but now faces the challenge of ensuring small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can turn widespread AI use into lasting business value. This challenge is not unique to the UAE, as Singapore also has a strong AI scoreboard, but struggles to ensure that progress is deep enough to be sustained.

In Singapore, a study by Amazon Web Services (AWS) found that three-quarters of financial-services SMEs have adopted AI. However, in many firms, AI capability rests on one person. To address this, Singapore aims to develop leading firms as "champions of AI" and create a market for "forward deployed engineers" who can combine software skills with the ability to explain technology to clients and solve operational problems.

The UAE and Singapore are not alone in their efforts to develop AI capabilities. The Digital Economy Framework Agreement (Defa) is expected to be signed by Asean member states in November, establishing common rules to facilitate digital trade, enable trusted cross-border data flows, and build enduring AI capability across the region.

Brief written by urgent.news from Arabian Business, The Business Times - Singapore — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.