Emirates Foundation links up with Responsible AI to harness the tech for global good at UNGA

The Emirates Foundation has signed a partnership agreement with the Responsible AI Future Foundation at the UN General Assembly in New York, aiming to scale "AI for good" projects from the UAE to communities worldwide. The Responsible AI Future Foundation was launched by Microsoft and Abu Dhabi's G42, with the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence as a founding academic partner. The Emirates Foundation, an Abu Dhabi-based philanthropic organisation established in 2005, said the collaboration will focus on building AI capabilities, skills development and responsible implementation for communities in need.

"We want to work with the world to build use cases and then actually cascade them down to communities that are in need"

The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, ahead of a discussion at the UAE’s mission to the UN on AI, philanthropy and inclusive growth. Ahmed Al Shamsi, secretary general of the Emirates Foundation, described the signing as a milestone rather than a starting point: "We've been working on this for the past year and a half, but this is the milestone for us to actually press the green button and action things not just on a UAE scale but on a global scale."

Under the partnership, the two foundations will cooperate to use "AI for broader societal benefit, put responsible AI into practice, build capacity and skills, and help ensure the benefits reach people in areas of critical need", the organisations said in a joint announcement. The Responsible AI Future Foundation works with governments and organisations across the Middle East and the Global South to help countries build sovereign AI capabilities tailored to local languages, cultures and needs.

Mohamed Al Hosani, director of business development and partnership at the Emirates Foundation, said the next step is operational: to "work with organisations in the UAE and beyond to make sure that whatever we use in AI for good will be something that will help the community". The Emirates Foundation emphasised a multi-stakeholder approach it calls the "four Ps" — people, philanthropy, public and private — arguing that public, private and philanthropic actors must collaborate on any scalable cause.

• Partnership signatories: Emirates Foundation and Responsible AI Future Foundation (launched by Microsoft and G42; Mohamed bin Zayed University of AI a founding academic partner).
• Focus areas: skills development, responsible implementation, capacity building, and delivering use cases to communities in need.
• Operational progress: Emirates Foundation reports an 18-month programme of AI-for-good initiatives and an internal sandbox of use cases that are maturing and "ready to ship out".

Al Shamsi framed the UN signing as a signal to the international community: "The whole world is here at UNGA, and I think there's no use in just announcing something in the comfort of your own space. We want to tell everyone that the UAE is a platform for everyone to come and join hands for the benefit of all communities across the world." He added that implementation has "already started" with a foundation sandbox where use cases are moving toward deployment: "We have the landscape to make sure that it's no longer just a theory and that we're actually applying it."

Looking ahead, the partnership will test whether a UAE-originated innovation pipeline, backed by cross-sector partners including technology firms and an academic AI institution, can be adapted and governed for diverse contexts in the Global South. The emphasis on capacity building and responsible AI practices positions the effort as both a technical and a social endeavour, one the Emirates Foundation intends to scale beyond national boundaries in the coming months and years.