Abu Dhabi handed its rulebook to AI — starting with food imports

Abu Dhabi and OpenAI signed four agreements on November 2, witnessed by Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, covering government services, energy, investment and enterprise AI adoption.

The headline piece is the Machine-Readable Government initiative: selected policies and regulations are converted into formats AI systems can read, so AI can help officials with routine compliance checks such as permits and certificates, with each assessment traceable to its rule and officials keeping final say. The first pilot is already running at the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority, checking food imports on OpenAI's UAE-based inference infrastructure.