(NewsNation) — The United Arab Emirates will become the first nation in the world to rely on artificial intelligence to write new federal and local laws and review and amend existing legislation and other procedures.
The move to digitize the Gulf state comes as a new cabinet unit of the UAE government, the Regulatory Intelligence Office, was approved to help streamline the legislative process, several media outlets, including The Telegraph, reported.
The office will be responsible for designing, implementing and coordinating the AI regulatory system in a partnership with federal and local officials, according to reports.
As part of the shift, government officials said that laws, judicial rulings, executive procedures and public services will all be written by computers, the Telegraph noted.
“This new legislative system, powered by artificial intelligence, will change how we create laws, making the process faster and more precise,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the Dubai ruler and UAE prime minister and vice president, said, according to state media.
The UAE plans to use AI to track how its laws affect the country’s population and economy by creating a database of federal and local laws, the Financial Times reported.
The use of AI to write new legislation comes eight years after the UAE named the world’s first AI minister, Omar Sultan al-Olama. The appointment came shortly after the launch of the UAE Strategy for Artificial Intelligence, The Telegraph reported.
The report indicated that by 2030, Gulf state officials estimate that AI will have a global market value of $15.7 trillion, which will reduce government costs by 50 percent and boost the UAE’s gross domestic product by 35%.
Government officials expect AI to speed up lawmaking by 70 percent, the Financial Times reported, citing a cabinet meeting transcript. Sheikh Mohammed also said that AI would “regularly suggest updates to current legislation.”
