UAE among global leaders in AI agent adoption, analysis shows

A recent survey reveals that United Arab Emirates (UAE) companies and organizations are among the global leaders in adopting agentic artificial intelligence (AI) agents. Commissioned by data science and AI platform company Dataiku, the 2026 Global AI Confessions Report surveyed 685 chief information officers (CIOs) from the UAE, US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore.

The report found that 62% of UAE CIOs have more than 50 AI agents working in their organizations, a significantly higher figure than the global average of 9%. In fact, UAE CIOs were the highest among the eight markets surveyed, with 22% expecting to hire more than 10 AI experts or forward engineers in the coming year.

However, the survey also highlights areas where UAE businesses can improve their monitoring of AI agents. Only 5% of UAE CIOs could reliably identify and contain a problematic agent within one to two hours, the lowest result in the study and half the global figure of 10%. Additionally, 27% of UAE CIOs said they could only intervene later in the day to address an issue with a rogue AI agent, indicating that two-thirds of those surveyed could not contain the agent on the same day.

Kurt Muehmel, head of AI strategy at Dataiku, emphasized the importance of accountability in this context. While 80% of UAE CIOs have witnessed AI agents acting against business intent or policy while remaining within technical parameters, 62% caught the problem before it caused harm, the best global result. Muehmel suggested that businesses and organizations in the UAE should maintain a comprehensive inventory of every agent, designate an owner for each agent, and establish clear authority to stop them.

He also recommended standardizing testing, changing, and retiring agents, as well as practicing containment procedures akin to cyber security incident response. Dataiku's vice president for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa, Sid Bhatia, believes that the UAE's strong foundation in agentic AI deployment, investment in specialist expertise, and prevention of high agent incident harm bodes well for the country's leadership in AI.