Altman ranks UAE ahead on artificial intelligence adoption

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has described the UAE as the world’s most forward-looking country for artificial intelligence adoption, as his company agreed to deploy advanced AI technology across ADNOC’s energy operations.

Speaking at ADIPEC 2026 in Abu Dhabi on Monday, Altman praised the country’s commitment to integrating AI into government and business. His remarks accompanied a multiyear agreement between OpenAI, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and technology group G42 to develop systems supporting industrial and commercial decisions.

Altman said the UAE had embraced artificial intelligence from the launch of ChatGPT, with national leadership encouraging its adoption throughout the economy. He characterised that approach as a willingness to invest in technologies expected to influence future economic activity.

The agreement makes ADNOC the first energy company to deploy OpenAI Frontier, a platform designed to coordinate specialised AI agents across complex operations. ADNOC said the technology would link decisions involving production, processing, refining, logistics and trading, rather than treating individual activities separately.

The partners will initially concentrate on field development planning and the commercial valuation of oil production. Their systems will combine ADNOC’s operational information with OpenAI’s reasoning models, running on computing infrastructure provided by G42 within the UAE.

One application will bring together geological information, reservoir assessments, facilities requirements and financial considerations to prepare integrated field development plans. ADNOC said this could shorten planning exercises that currently take months to hours, although the projected improvement has not yet been independently demonstrated at scale.

A second application will connect information about crude supply, demand, prices and margins across the company’s operations. The objective is to help managers assess the commercial implications of decisions before implementation, while retaining human oversight of consequential choices.

Altman said the collaboration could help the energy industry address difficult operational challenges. He also emphasised the reciprocal relationship between energy and artificial intelligence: more capable systems could improve energy operations, but expanding AI infrastructure would itself require substantial electricity supplies.

During his conference appearance, Altman discussed changes already taking place in workplaces. ChatGPT and similar tools, he said, were helping employees complete tasks more efficiently, while some users increasingly treated AI systems as collaborators or members of their teams.

He stressed that people should remain responsible for important decisions. His comments reflected concerns about how increasingly capable systems should be supervised, particularly when their outputs affect businesses, public services or critical infrastructure.

Altman identified energy as a principal constraint on the expansion of AI. Although the computing resources required for individual tasks can become more efficient, growing demand for increasingly sophisticated services is placing pressure on the infrastructure needed to operate them.

ADNOC managing director and group chief executive Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who is also the UAE’s Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, said the partnership would combine industrial expertise with advanced AI to improve decisions and strengthen energy security.

Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, witnessed the agreement’s signing. G42 International chief executive Mansoor Al Mansoori said the collaboration could improve systems that support energy supply beyond the UAE.

Altman also described the scientific potential of AI, arguing that advanced models were moving beyond routine assistance towards solving difficult research problems. He said the pace of progress increased the importance of ensuring that systems remained aligned with human intentions and that developers could demonstrate safeguards against serious failures.

The conference discussion placed those questions alongside the energy industry’s need to manage complicated assets and volatile markets. For ADNOC, the proposed system is designed to combine technical assessments with commercial forecasts, providing decision-makers with a broader view of potential consequences. The companies have not disclosed a financial value for the multiyear agreement or a detailed timetable for full deployment.

ADNOC said its existing technology programme includes more than 200 AI applications and 70 robotics use cases, either deployed or under development. The new platform is intended to complement ENERGYai, its specialist system for analysing subsurface operations, rather than replace it.

The company also said it had introduced ChatGPT Enterprise to more than 40,000 employees, with adoption exceeding 97 per cent. The new agreement includes workforce training and the joint development of additional applications, alongside cybersecurity measures intended to protect industrial systems and proprietary data across its extensive operations.