AI Agents Could Create One-Person Billion-Dollar Companies, UAE Minister Says

(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) One-person companies worth tens of millions of dollars or even billions could emerge as artificial intelligence agents multiply the capabilities of individual workers, UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence Omar Al Olama said on Tuesday, October 6.

Speaking at AI Everything Abu Dhabi, Al Olama said the UAE could use AI agents to overcome the limitations of its relatively small population and compete economically with much larger markets.

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“We will see the emergence of one-person companies that are going to become $20 million or billion-dollar companies that are going to be one person plus agents,” he said.

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He said AI agents could“multiply” a person's ability, skills and impact, creating an opportunity for countries such as the UAE to compete with markets with populations of hundreds of millions or more.

“If you're able to give them an advantage of having agents that multiply their ability and multiply their skill and multiply their impact, we will be able to economically compete with the larger players,” Al Olama said.

The shift is already happening in UAE workplaces, he said, pointing to an Abu Dhabi business he had visited during the week where more than 10 per cent of its workforce was now made up of AI agents.

The agents were performing tasks at“multiple speed”, while improving productivity and decision-making, he said.

The comments come as the UAE moves aggressively towards agentic AI across government and business. The UAE Cabinet announced in April a framework to deploy agentic AI across 50 per cent of government sectors and operations within two years.

In June, the UAE established the Artificial Intelligence and Data Authorit, with Al Olama appointed as its chairman. The authority is responsible for national directions and priorities in AI, data and digital government.

One-person studios

Al Olama said the same transformation would extend beyond conventional businesses into entertainment, with AI potentially allowing individuals to operate studios that previously required large teams and budgets.

“Historically, there's a concentration of entertainment being created in certain markets, whether it's in Hollywood, as you mentioned, or in certain places in India, like Bollywood, or some of the other places around the world, like South Korea,” he said.

“I genuinely believe that if people are given the ability to use these tools and to hone their skills and to improve them, we will be able to create this proliferation.”

He said the first market to dominate AI-generated entertainment would be the one that pushes the technology into widespread use.

Al Olama said he had seen advertisements on Instagram and Snapchat for AI-produced films and series that could quickly draw viewers in.

He described a model in which small teams or individuals use AI to produce scripts, generate multiple iterations of storylines and publish content rapidly.

He cited recurring themes including aliens, dinosaurs, spies and ninjas as examples of how AI could be used to create variations of entertainment content at speed.

“The barrier to entry has gone down so low that we will see entertainment studios, again, one person in entertainment studios, that are going to be able to create incredible content in ways that are going to change the world,” he said.

He acknowledged that governments would still need to ensure such content complies with national restrictions.

“I genuinely believe that that revolution is going to start now,” he said.

What is UAE's AI strategy?

Al Olama said countries and individuals that choose not to engage with AI risk falling behind, arguing that simply regulating the technology without adopting it would not protect economies from its effects.

“If you don't do anything about it, if you say that, 'I don't want to be a part of this revolution,' what would be the net effect on your economy and on your society?” he pointed.

“The answer, 99 per cent of the time, is it's going to be negative.”

He said workers could lose jobs if they did not adapt, while countries that refuse to use AI risk losing economic opportunities to others that do.

“The way that we see it, our playbook is simple. Every single person to ride this wave needs to understand this technology, needs to be able to utilise it, needs to be able to benefit from it,” he said.

The UAE has therefore pursued an aggressive AI-skilling strategy, he said, including efforts to train 80,000 government employees to become“super users” capable of building agents and leveraging AI models.

He also revealed that the UAE, working with Microsoft, is preparing to announce next month the conclusion of a campaign aimed at training one million people to become“super-propellers of AI”.

“We're going to be announcing next month the conclusion of that. So far, the numbers have been quite good,” he said, adding that the UAE would announce more ambitious programmes.

Al Olama also pointed to an AI film festival he attended in Kazakhstan, where he said a single individual had created a film or piece of content that would traditionally have required a large team and potentially millions of dollars.

He said such tools could change how people express themselves and create new opportunities to monetise content without necessarily becoming social-media influencers.

UAE wants to win by using AI

Asked how the UAE could compete with established AI hubs such as San Francisco and London, Al Olama said the country's strategy was not necessarily to build the world's biggest AI laboratories.

“History is a great teacher,” he said, arguing that the biggest economic and social benefits from major technologies often accrue to countries that successfully adopt and apply them rather than those where they were first invented.

“I don't think we will compete with San Francisco to build on it,” he said.“We're building on it [our own models] for certain reasons. But the fact of how we want to apply this here is we want to be the fastest to market, we want the country and the cities that deploy AI to improve quality of life in the most effective way possible.”

The UAE's wider government strategy is already moving in that direction, with the government targeting agentic AI deployment across half of its sectors and operations within two years.

'Winning' means changing lives

Al Olama said the UAE's definition of success in AI went beyond company valuations or productivity gains.

Asked what it meant to“win” in AI, he said some definitions focused on achieving huge market valuations, but the UAE's measure was different.

“Our definition of winning is that you change the largest number of lives of people positively,” he said.

He said the government was looking not only at productivity and economic output, but at whether AI deployment across government and related sectors actually improved people's lives.

He also linked public acceptance of AI to whether people could see tangible benefits from its use.

“If they're able to see that every single time AI is mentioned or deployed, their quality of life improves, they're going to react very differently,” he said.

He said the UAE ranks first in AI optimism in many reports and surveys, and argued that maintaining that position would require ensuring that AI deployments have a positive impact on people's lives.

IP rules need to be reassessed

The minister also said the rapid development of AI was forcing governments to rethink intellectual-property protections.

He said traditional IP systems were created to protect human inventors from people copying their work, but that systems had never previously had to deal with a non-human system capable of creating new outputs.

“Never in human history, up until this point, was there an opportunity for something that is not human to actually create,” he said.

“This, I think, is the right moment for us to sit and review what are these rights, review what are these protections, and how do we ensure that these protections are fit for purpose in this day and age?”

He pointed to AI systems producing intricate engineering designs for areas such as rockets and electric motors, saying these could potentially underpin commercially valuable companies.

He also said the nature of data used to train AI models was changing rapidly, claiming that synthetic data generated by AI now makes up the overwhelming majority of training data.

“AI is creating and AI is consuming,” he said.“And this is going to become the norm that we live in in the future.”

He said governments needed to consider a framework that protects creators while also encouraging people to use AI in ways that generate positive outcomes.

Regulation must keep pace with innovation

Al Olama said governments faced a dilemma in regulating frontier AI because innovators seek to push technological boundaries while regulators have to protect people from potential harm.

“The dilemma is, there's a dilemma between the innovator and the regulator,” he said.

He argued that the two sides should not operate separately.

“The challenge that most governments have is that the innovators sit in the innovators' section, the regulators sit in the regulators' section,” he explained.

“There's no cross-fertilisation or cross-pollination of thought, of planning, and we don't actually work towards that.”

The UAE's approach had been to bring innovators into regulatory thinking while pushing regulators to think more like innovators.

AI and elections

Al Olama also highlighted the UAE's approach to AI use during elections, saying candidates are required to register their use of AI, restrict it to use cases relating to themselves rather than harming or tainting another candidate, and log and report every use case within the required timeframe.

He said such rules were intended to prevent AI from being used to spread misinformation or for blackmail while ensuring accountability.

AI gives young people greater leverage

Responding to a student who asked how young people with ideas could get government attention despite lacking connections, Al Olama argued that AI had made the current generation unusually powerful.

“Every single generation, every single human that has lived has actually produced something that has lasted of content and knowledge at the tip of your fingertips,” he said.

He said students could now access knowledge and intelligence tools without needing to find individual experts or spend long periods conducting research before pursuing an idea.

“You guys can do that today. And you can do it in a way where you are unhindered or unrestricted,” he said.

He urged young people to use AI tools to build ideas that others might initially consider impossible.

Government should be open to outside ideas

Asked how social-impact organisations could work with the government to close gaps in AI adoption, Al Olama said governments should be accessible and receptive to new ideas.

“If you have a successful government, people are able to approach the government in a frictionless manner,” he said.

He pointed to government platforms including AI Camp and UAE Codes, as well as incubators and accelerators, as existing routes for people and organisations to engage with government initiatives.

“Government should embrace new thinking, should support and welcome those who want to help the government evolve,” he said.

He said government was subject to continuous evolution, from smaller changes to major transformations, and needed to work with outside organisations to evolve quickly and respond to disruption.

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