KB News Desk
The contest that will shape the next era of mobility is not over who builds the best cars or aircraft, but over who controls the artificial intelligence beneath them, Obaid Al Ketbi told the Future AI Mobility Summit 2026 on Tuesday.
Al Ketbi, founder and chairman of Abu Dhabi-based Dr. O Group Holding and a former UAE major general, argued in his keynote at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Seoul that AI, mobility and what he called the “low-altitude economy” are converging into a single system, one that moves drones, autonomous platforms and eventually people through shared airspace.
The systems directing that traffic are not neutral, he warned. The algorithms that steer autonomous vehicles, manage airspace and route logistics carry embedded decisions about safety and data, and a country that does not build and govern them itself will surrender those decisions to others.
“If nations do not build and govern these systems themselves, those choices will be made for them,” Al Ketbi said. “Sovereignty is not about building walls. It is about a nation’s capacity to direct artificial intelligence in line with its own values and future.”
He pressed the point into defense and border security, noting that the low-altitude domain is no longer purely civilian and that reliance on foreign technology leaves a nation exposed. Real sovereignty, he said, grows from homegrown research and institutions such as the UAE’s Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence.
Al Ketbi cast Korea as a natural partner, citing its strength in manufacturing, robotics, batteries and mobility, and called for joint research and shared standards for airspace management and safety certification. The two countries, he suggested, should behave less like trading partners than as co-investors writing the rules of an emerging field.
He closed by turning back to people. AI is not the destination, he said. “It will not be how sophisticated our systems become. It will be how many lives we improve.”
