Microsoft on track to train 1 million learners in AI by 2027

Microsoft is working closely with the UAE government to build AI skills at scale, Amr Kamel, General Manager, Microsoft UAE said to Gulf News at GISEC 2026 on Wednesday, describing workforce training as a core pillar of the country's national AI vision.

“We have a commitment with UAE with the government where we're training 1 million learners by the mid of 2027, and we are well ahead in meeting this target and even beyond,” Kamel said.

He highlighted that UAE is not just adopting AI but industrializing AI across government and society. And to do that, they are investing heavily in human capability. The commitment comes as the UAE moves to run 50 per cent of federal government operations on AI agents within the next two years, a target he described as a firm government plan rather than a distant ambition.

AI adoption to AI diffusionUAE is moving beyond AI adoption to AI diffusion, according to Kamel. While discussing the partnership between Microsoft and G42, he emphasised on 3 pillars: technology, skills, and trust.

Many organizations are still stuck in the “pilot” phase of AI, running small experiments, proofs of concept, or isolated use cases. This is the gap in the process, between experimentation vs“But the piece I would highlight as some of the gaps where we see in some enterprises is to think of the pilot as the finish line. ‘I want to try AI, but I'll do this pilot’,” he added.

Responsible by designAfter moving beyond pilots and scaling skills, the third major element he stresses is security by design. That is to define what AI is authorized to do, and to build a guardrail, governance and Identity control.

Securing by design is to build a secure foundation that can scale AI, according to Kamel, “The key, as we scale AI, is how to secure it from the get-go,” he said, “The challenge that we see is that when these projects start without security in mind by design from the get-go, it becomes very hard to do it as an afterthought.”He added that the approach is not meant to slow down the innovation, but to accelerate rather than holding it back.

“That's how deep we are thinking of security and governance as an integral part of building AI, and more importantly, building responsibility,” he said.

Looking beyondHe explains that one of the biggest benefits of AI for cybersecurity is “using AI to defend AI”, across the whole chain from detecting vulnerabilities, to fixing them faster, and then maintaining a strong security over time.

With the government's 50 per cent-agentic target now framed as policy rather than aspiration, Microsoft's bet, according to Kamel, is that skills development, not just technology deployment, will determine how quickly, and how safely that transformation happens..The race to stay cyber ready is on