UAE’s Trustworthiness Index rises 30.2 points as SAS-IDC study links stronger AI governance to significantly higher returns
The UAE is making rapid progress in building trustworthy artificial intelligence capabilities, with its AI Trustworthiness Index rising 30.2 points to 65.7 in 2026, according to the second annual Data and AI Impact Report: The New Economics of Trust from SAS, with research insights from IDC.
The improvement places the UAE above the global benchmark and highlights the country’s accelerating shift from AI experimentation to structured enterprise adoption. The findings also point to a wider business lesson: organisations that establish stronger foundations for trustworthy AI are significantly more likely to generate measurable returns.
Globally, organisations investing in trustworthy AI practices are 15 times more likely to report strong or high ROI from their AI projects—62% compared with only 4% among organisations with weaker practices. Those with the strongest trustworthy AI capabilities also reported 1.85 times greater gains across 13 business outcomes, including revenue, cost savings and customer experience.
“The UAE has moved rapidly from AI ambition to adoption, with national strategies pushing governance into both government and the private sector at an unprecedented pace. This progress reflects the growing recognition that trustworthy AI is essential to scaling AI successfully.” — Michel Ghorayeb, Managing Director, SAS UAE
Yet trust remains a significant obstacle. The study found that 97.2% of users override AI recommendations in at least some situations, with the inability to explain an AI decision emerging as the leading reason. Trust also falls from 76% for generative AI to 66% for agentic AI as systems become more autonomous.
The UAE reflects this challenge. Data quality and governance is the leading reliability priority among UAE organisations, reaching 62.2% in 2026. However, only 13.5% mandate data-quality processes for every AI project, revealing a gap between strategic awareness and consistent execution.
The data foundation remains another constraint globally. Only 17.5% of enterprises have fully optimised infrastructure capable of meeting agentic AI requirements. Organisations with optimised data foundations are four times more likely to expect strong AI ROI.
Based on responses from 2,699 decision-makers across 28 countries, the study reinforces a growing reality for CIOs: AI value depends not simply on deploying powerful models, but on building the data, governance, explainability and accountability needed to trust them.
