emirates7 - As part of the World Governments Summit (WGS) 2026, government leaders, researchers, global experts, and pioneers across technology and economic sectors participating in the Artificial Intelligence Forum explored the future role of AI in global economic transformation, advanced scientific research, and the governance frameworks needed for the next decade.
The forum served as a global platform to align perspectives on the role of AI in boosting productivity, advancing infrastructure and safety, transforming the workforce, and addressing the geopolitical dimensions of AI, while examining pathways to ensure its benefits extend to both advanced and emerging economies.
David Moinina Sengeh, Chief Minister of the Republic of Sierra Leone, and Munyeong Lim, Vice Chairman of the Presidential Council on National Artificial Intelligence Strategy of the Republic of Korea, inaugurated the Forum.
In his opening remarks, Sengeh stressed the importance of anchoring AI as a core governmental priority worldwide, given its profound impact on societies, economies, and development trajectories. He highlighted the UAE’s pioneering role in leading global efforts to shape the international vision for AI and amplify its transformative potential over the past several years.
He further emphasised that fairness, equal opportunity, and inclusivity must lie at the heart of this transformation, underscoring the importance of leadership-driven digital journeys. He praised Sierra Leone’s leadership and vision.
“Sierra Leone has demonstrated that true impact extends beyond metrics and indicators to tangible outcomes, such as expanding access to banking and financial services, investing in human capital development, and improving healthcare delivery through practical digital solutions that empower educators, enable citizens, and deliver measurable value on the ground," Sengeh noted.
In his keynote, Lim stated that the Republic of Korea, a nation that has consistently safeguarded its democracy through the power of knowledge rather than force, now aspires to open the era of an "AI Basic Society" together with the international community, ensuring that the benefits of AI are shared as a universal right for all humanity.
The session “The AI Economy: From Adoption to Advantage,” featuring Arvind Krishna, Chairman, President, and CEO of IBM, highlighted the importance of moving beyond AI adoption toward strategic deployment that delivers high-impact global returns.
Discussions addressed the foundations of a successful AI economy, including redesigning processes and business models to enhance productivity, accelerate innovation, and improve customer experience, while adhering to responsible AI principles of transparency, security, and trust.
Krishna noted that throughout economic history, productivity has been the primary engine of GDP growth, investment expansion, and sustainable prosperity, from the printing press and the spread of knowledge to mechanisation and successive industrial revolutions.
“Today, the world faces a challenge: declining population growth and productivity. AI represents a decisive force in narrowing this gap by augmenting human capabilities and redefining what can be shared across citizens, economies, and technologies,” he explained.
"Despite widespread concern surrounding AI risks, the practical approach is to move away from fragmented, low-impact experiments and instead focus on a limited number of scalable, low-risk use cases. This allows institutions to test AI responsibly, scale it with confidence, and achieve meaningful enterprise-level impact,” he said.
In the session “Can Artificial Intelligence Think Like a Scientist?” Prof. Amnon Shashua, President and CEO of Mobileye, discussed AI’s ability to simulate scientific reasoning. Moderated by Paul Wallace from Bloomberg, the discussion examined the distinction between statistical inference and deep causal understanding, and their role in enabling AI systems to formulate hypotheses, test them, and make more reliable decisions.
The session also addressed the ethical and scientific challenges of building trustworthy AI, highlighting breakthroughs in agentic systems, robotics integration, and high-efficiency computational architectures.
The Forum also featured the session “What Comes After Generative AI: The Road to Real-World Intelligence,” in which Lila Ibrahim, COO of Google DeepMind, shared her vision for the transition toward delivering sustained, real-world value. She outlined how generative AI can translate research breakthroughs into high-return applications across sectors, stressing the importance of measuring real-world impact on wellbeing.
The session also highlighted the need to build scalable, trustworthy systems, integrate generative AI into daily institutional workflows, and invest in both infrastructure and advanced skills.
A panel titled “Humans and Agents: The Next Productivity Frontiers” moderated by Amandeep Bhangu of Voice Media London, brought together Carl Pei, Co-Founder and CEO of Nothing; Tuan Tran, President of Technology and Innovation at HP; Simon de Montfort Walker, Executive Vice President for Industry Applications at Oracle and Masoud Mohamed Sharif, CEO of e& UAE.
The discussion examined AI’s role as a strategic driver of global productivity and growth, highlighting emerging trends in scientific discovery, workforce transformation, and the rise of AI agents reshaping modern systems. It also addressed the skills development and policy frameworks needed to prepare societies for the next phase of AI integration.
The session “How Data Centres Are Reshaping Energy,” moderated by Mike Allen, Co-Founder and Executive Editor of Axios, featured Guillaume Verdon, Founder and CEO of Extropic, and Enass Abo-Hamad, Co-Founder and CEO of H2GO Power. It discussed the growing relationship between the rapid expansion of data centres and global energy demand.
The session examined challenges related to rising energy consumption, the need for clean and flexible energy sources, including advanced nuclear energy and hydrogen, innovative storage and cooling solutions. It emphasised the importance of proactive planning and integration between the technology and energy sectors to support sustainable growth aligned with global climate goals. The discussion also addressed the geopolitical and economic implications of data centres and their growing role in shaping the future of global energy.
The session “A Global Preview of the Corporate AI Adoption,” featuring Antonio Zappulla, CEO of Thomson Reuters Foundation, explored the profound transformations AI is driving in business models and executive decision-making. He emphasised the importance of data governance, transparency, and responsible AI to ensure sustainable return on investment, highlighting the role of leadership in reskilling talent, fostering adaptive organisational cultures, and advancing global dialogue on AI governance, standards, safety, and accountability.
In the “Artificial Intelligence in Financial Systems,” session, Gary Kazantsev, Head of Quant Technology Strategy at Bloomberg, underscored the importance of equitable access and global inclusion in AI. He outlined strategic pathways for developing economies to boost AI readiness through trusted data infrastructure, talent development, increased computing capacity, and strong international partnerships.
These efforts, he noted, are essential to bridging the digital divide, expanding access to AI in financial systems, and ultimately promoting stability, innovation, and inclusive growth.
The Forum highlighted the accelerating development of AI models, agentic systems, and advanced inference architectures, placing increasing pressure on traditional governance frameworks and intensifying the global race for computing power, data, and talent.
This underscores the need for governments to strike a balance between innovation, scientific integrity, safety assessment, infrastructure readiness, and ensuring inclusive access, particularly amid rising demand for computing capacity and growing sustainability pressures.
The forum served as a global platform to align perspectives on the role of AI in boosting productivity, advancing infrastructure and safety, transforming the workforce, and addressing the geopolitical dimensions of AI, while examining pathways to ensure its benefits extend to both advanced and emerging economies.
David Moinina Sengeh, Chief Minister of the Republic of Sierra Leone, and Munyeong Lim, Vice Chairman of the Presidential Council on National Artificial Intelligence Strategy of the Republic of Korea, inaugurated the Forum.
In his opening remarks, Sengeh stressed the importance of anchoring AI as a core governmental priority worldwide, given its profound impact on societies, economies, and development trajectories. He highlighted the UAE’s pioneering role in leading global efforts to shape the international vision for AI and amplify its transformative potential over the past several years.
He further emphasised that fairness, equal opportunity, and inclusivity must lie at the heart of this transformation, underscoring the importance of leadership-driven digital journeys. He praised Sierra Leone’s leadership and vision.
“Sierra Leone has demonstrated that true impact extends beyond metrics and indicators to tangible outcomes, such as expanding access to banking and financial services, investing in human capital development, and improving healthcare delivery through practical digital solutions that empower educators, enable citizens, and deliver measurable value on the ground," Sengeh noted.
In his keynote, Lim stated that the Republic of Korea, a nation that has consistently safeguarded its democracy through the power of knowledge rather than force, now aspires to open the era of an "AI Basic Society" together with the international community, ensuring that the benefits of AI are shared as a universal right for all humanity.
The session “The AI Economy: From Adoption to Advantage,” featuring Arvind Krishna, Chairman, President, and CEO of IBM, highlighted the importance of moving beyond AI adoption toward strategic deployment that delivers high-impact global returns.
Discussions addressed the foundations of a successful AI economy, including redesigning processes and business models to enhance productivity, accelerate innovation, and improve customer experience, while adhering to responsible AI principles of transparency, security, and trust.
Krishna noted that throughout economic history, productivity has been the primary engine of GDP growth, investment expansion, and sustainable prosperity, from the printing press and the spread of knowledge to mechanisation and successive industrial revolutions.
“Today, the world faces a challenge: declining population growth and productivity. AI represents a decisive force in narrowing this gap by augmenting human capabilities and redefining what can be shared across citizens, economies, and technologies,” he explained.
"Despite widespread concern surrounding AI risks, the practical approach is to move away from fragmented, low-impact experiments and instead focus on a limited number of scalable, low-risk use cases. This allows institutions to test AI responsibly, scale it with confidence, and achieve meaningful enterprise-level impact,” he said.
In the session “Can Artificial Intelligence Think Like a Scientist?” Prof. Amnon Shashua, President and CEO of Mobileye, discussed AI’s ability to simulate scientific reasoning. Moderated by Paul Wallace from Bloomberg, the discussion examined the distinction between statistical inference and deep causal understanding, and their role in enabling AI systems to formulate hypotheses, test them, and make more reliable decisions.
The session also addressed the ethical and scientific challenges of building trustworthy AI, highlighting breakthroughs in agentic systems, robotics integration, and high-efficiency computational architectures.
The Forum also featured the session “What Comes After Generative AI: The Road to Real-World Intelligence,” in which Lila Ibrahim, COO of Google DeepMind, shared her vision for the transition toward delivering sustained, real-world value. She outlined how generative AI can translate research breakthroughs into high-return applications across sectors, stressing the importance of measuring real-world impact on wellbeing.
The session also highlighted the need to build scalable, trustworthy systems, integrate generative AI into daily institutional workflows, and invest in both infrastructure and advanced skills.
A panel titled “Humans and Agents: The Next Productivity Frontiers” moderated by Amandeep Bhangu of Voice Media London, brought together Carl Pei, Co-Founder and CEO of Nothing; Tuan Tran, President of Technology and Innovation at HP; Simon de Montfort Walker, Executive Vice President for Industry Applications at Oracle and Masoud Mohamed Sharif, CEO of e& UAE.
The discussion examined AI’s role as a strategic driver of global productivity and growth, highlighting emerging trends in scientific discovery, workforce transformation, and the rise of AI agents reshaping modern systems. It also addressed the skills development and policy frameworks needed to prepare societies for the next phase of AI integration.
The session “How Data Centres Are Reshaping Energy,” moderated by Mike Allen, Co-Founder and Executive Editor of Axios, featured Guillaume Verdon, Founder and CEO of Extropic, and Enass Abo-Hamad, Co-Founder and CEO of H2GO Power. It discussed the growing relationship between the rapid expansion of data centres and global energy demand.
The session examined challenges related to rising energy consumption, the need for clean and flexible energy sources, including advanced nuclear energy and hydrogen, innovative storage and cooling solutions. It emphasised the importance of proactive planning and integration between the technology and energy sectors to support sustainable growth aligned with global climate goals. The discussion also addressed the geopolitical and economic implications of data centres and their growing role in shaping the future of global energy.
The session “A Global Preview of the Corporate AI Adoption,” featuring Antonio Zappulla, CEO of Thomson Reuters Foundation, explored the profound transformations AI is driving in business models and executive decision-making. He emphasised the importance of data governance, transparency, and responsible AI to ensure sustainable return on investment, highlighting the role of leadership in reskilling talent, fostering adaptive organisational cultures, and advancing global dialogue on AI governance, standards, safety, and accountability.
In the “Artificial Intelligence in Financial Systems,” session, Gary Kazantsev, Head of Quant Technology Strategy at Bloomberg, underscored the importance of equitable access and global inclusion in AI. He outlined strategic pathways for developing economies to boost AI readiness through trusted data infrastructure, talent development, increased computing capacity, and strong international partnerships.
These efforts, he noted, are essential to bridging the digital divide, expanding access to AI in financial systems, and ultimately promoting stability, innovation, and inclusive growth.
The Forum highlighted the accelerating development of AI models, agentic systems, and advanced inference architectures, placing increasing pressure on traditional governance frameworks and intensifying the global race for computing power, data, and talent.
This underscores the need for governments to strike a balance between innovation, scientific integrity, safety assessment, infrastructure readiness, and ensuring inclusive access, particularly amid rising demand for computing capacity and growing sustainability pressures.
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