Law by Algorithm: UAE Integrates AI into Legislation — First Step Toward a Digital Parliament?
The future where laws are drafted not by humans but by algorithms is no longer hypothetical.
The United Arab Emirates has become the first country to officially announce plans to integrate AI into the legislative process — from drafting to analysis and review of laws.
A new division, the Regulatory Intelligence Office, has been established to oversee the transformation of the country’s legislative system. The main goal: to reduce the time for preparing and adopting laws by 70%, replacing manual analysis with AI-assisted synthesis of legal norms, judicial precedents, and social context.
The AI model will be trained on a dataset including federal and local laws, court decisions, and internal government data.It will not only propose formulations but also identify contradictions, “outdated” norms, and potential legal gaps.
In a broader context, this move is part of the UAE’s National AI Leadership Strategy, which also includes a $30 billion infrastructure fund (MGX) and global initiatives in the field of AGI.
Reactions have been mixed.Supporters talk about a future of “living legislation” — more adaptive, faster, and more transparent.Critics point to the risks of AI-driven interpretations, biases in training data, and the ethical dilemma: can a soulless system define human behavior norms?
But the debate is no longer about if — it’s about how. AI is already present in courts, tax systems, and immigration services.Legislation is simply the next frontier. The UAE is betting that the legal architecture of the future will not be handwritten — but generated under human strategic oversight.
Could this be the first step towards a post-human legislative process, where parliaments become supervisory bodies over intelligent systems?
