The United Arab Emirates and the World Economic Forum are opening a dialogue on 13 October 2026 to develop the Global Principles for Strategy in the Agentic AI Era, according to a press release published by Zawya. The discussion begins during the Annual Meeting of Global Future Leaders in Dubai. Its proposed principles concern how governments and institutions plan strategy and make decisions using AI systems that can reason, coordinate and act with greater autonomy than tools responding to instructions.
Key points
- The dialogue opens in Dubai on 13 October 2026, during the Annual Meeting of Global Future Leaders.
- The proposed principles are an initiative of the UAE–World Economic Forum Global Strategic Intelligence Programme.
- The UAE and the forum want the principles to guide the use of agentic AI in strategic planning and decision-making.
The Global Strategic Intelligence Programme
The principles sit within the Global Strategic Intelligence Programme, an existing partnership between the UAE and the World Economic Forum. The partners describe the programme as an effort to strengthen governments’ capacity for strategic intelligence, foresight and decision-making, and to develop methods for strategic work. The proposed principles bring the use of more autonomous AI systems into that programme.
The initiative is directed at governments and institutions considering how to organise strategic planning, rather than at a particular AI product. The release describes the principles as a framework for redesigning planning and decision-making and for applying agentic AI to those tasks. It says the dialogue will address systems capable of reasoning, coordinating and acting with greater autonomy. That gives the discussion a different subject from the use of tools that simply answer an instruction: the systems under consideration may take part in the work leading up to a decision.
The partners intend the principles to serve as an international reference point for strategic work. Their stated ambition is for governments and institutions to draw on AI in planning and foresight, turning data and knowledge into decisions and results. Those are aims for the dialogue and its proposed framework. The step announced on 13 October is the opening of the discussion to develop the principles.
Huda Al Hashimi’s case for shared principles
Huda Al Hashimi, the UAE’s Deputy Minister of Cabinet Affairs for Strategic Affairs, said the country wanted to bring experts, decision-makers and other participants together to develop shared principles that could keep pace with advances in AI. She described an international reference framework for governments and institutions using the technology in planning, foresight and decision-making. Her account places the proposed framework at the point where institutions decide how to use AI in strategic work, before those decisions become established practice.
Al Hashimi also said the UAE wanted to contribute to agreement on practices for using assistive AI in strategic work. She linked that effort to governments’ ability to anticipate change and to base decisions on data, knowledge, analysis and evidence. In her description, the principles are part of a broader attempt to build more adaptable government systems and operating methods that use AI to improve the quality of decisions.
Her proposed approach extends beyond an individual government adopting a tool for its own planning. Shared principles, if developed and used by other institutions, would offer a common point of reference for decisions about where AI belongs in strategic work. Al Hashimi’s stated aim is to develop that reference with participants from outside the UAE, alongside the country’s work with the World Economic Forum.
Stephan Mergenthaler on the global framework
Stephan Mergenthaler, the World Economic Forum’s Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer, called the proposed principles an opportunity to establish a shared global framework for responsible development and deployment. He argued that agentic AI is changing how governments anticipate events, assess possibilities and make strategic decisions. The forum’s case for common principles rests on institutions aligning their approach to those uses, rather than each treating the technology only as a separate procurement or planning choice.
Mergenthaler said that alignment could help institutions deal with complexity, respond more quickly and make decisions with greater confidence. Those outcomes remain the forum’s stated ambition for the principles. The dialogue convenes specialists, people who make decisions and influential voices internationally to examine how agentic AI could alter strategic work and which principles should govern its use.
