More than 150 of the world's most distinguished scientists, including dozens of Nobel Prize winners, convened in Dubai for the inaugural World Laureates Summit — a landmark precursor event to the World Governments Summit 2026. The event was opened by UAE President HH Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, with artificial intelligence dominating virtually every panel, keynote, and conversation. What emerged was a nuanced picture: tremendous excitement about AI's potential to accelerate scientific discovery alongside deep concern about its capacity to reshape — and potentially destabilize — human civilization within a generation.
The summit represented the first time a gathering of this caliber of scientists has been hosted in the Middle East, and its location in Dubai was itself significant — part of a broader shift in the center of gravity for global scientific discourse.
World Laureates Summit — Inaugural Edition
150+ Nobel laureates and leading scientists gathered in Dubai, opened by UAE President and Dubai Ruler, with AI as the defining theme of every session
The 98% Prediction: AI's Trajectory Through 2050
Among the most striking — and widely reported — statements to emerge from the summit was the prediction that artificial intelligence could "take control of 98 per cent of everything" by 2050. The claim was not made by a tech CEO seeking investment or a science fiction author seeking attention, but by leading researchers with decades of experience in machine learning, cognitive science, and complex systems.
The reasoning behind the prediction is straightforward but sobering: as AI systems become capable of performing an ever-wider range of cognitive tasks — from legal analysis and medical diagnosis to scientific research and strategic planning — the percentage of human activities where AI does not play a significant or dominant role shrinks rapidly. By 2050, the scientists argued, only the most deeply human activities — interpersonal relationships, creative expression in its purest forms, and moral decision-making — might remain outside AI's purview.
Experts cautioned that once sufficiently advanced AI systems are deployed at scale across government, military, economic, and social infrastructure, they could become "as hard to overthrow as a government" — a warning that underscored the urgency of establishing robust governance frameworks now, before the technology's trajectory becomes irreversible.
"Once AI systems are deeply embedded in the infrastructure of governance, finance, and defense, removing or reforming them becomes as difficult as changing the form of government itself. The decisions we make about AI governance in the next five years will determine the next fifty."
— World Laureates Summit panelist, February 2026
The Dual Nature of AI: Promise and Peril
The summit's most valuable contribution was its refusal to adopt a one-dimensional narrative about AI. Unlike industry conferences where the tone tends toward unqualified optimism, or media coverage that often defaults to alarmism, the World Laureates Summit presented both sides with equal intellectual rigor:
The Promise: Accelerating Discovery
AI is already transforming drug discovery (reducing timelines from years to months), climate modeling (increasing accuracy by orders of magnitude), materials science (identifying novel compounds for batteries and semiconductors), and astronomical observation (processing telescope data that would take human researchers centuries)
The Peril: Deepfakes and Misinformation
Scientists highlighted the growing threat of deepfakes, scams powered by generative AI, and what one speaker described as "the poisoning of our social environment" through AI-generated misinformation that is becoming indistinguishable from authentic content
Healthcare Transformation
AI-powered diagnostics can already identify certain cancers and retinal diseases with greater accuracy than human specialists. Wearable devices combined with AI can predict cardiac events days before they occur, potentially saving millions of lives annually
Autonomous Weapons Concern
Multiple laureates raised alarm about the development of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) and called for immediate international frameworks to prevent an AI arms race that could make nuclear proliferation look manageable by comparison
World Laureates Association Relocates to Dubai
In one of the summit's most consequential announcements, the World Laureates Association (WLA) — a prestigious organization representing Nobel Prize winners and leading global scientists — confirmed the relocation of its global headquarters from China to Dubai. The move represents a significant vote of confidence in Dubai's ambitions to become a center for scientific research and not just business and tourism.
The WLA's decision to base itself in Dubai was influenced by several factors: the emirate's geographic centrality between Asian, European, and African research communities; its world-class infrastructure and quality of life; its political stability and openness to international collaboration; and the UAE government's demonstrated willingness to invest substantially in science and technology. The organization will operate from a dedicated facility in Dubai, hosting annual convenings, managing global scientific programs, and coordinating research initiatives across member institutions worldwide.
Professor Kornberg's AI Agent Network
Nobel laureate Professor Roger Kornberg, who received the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription, announced plans to build an AI agent network connecting leading researchers worldwide. The network would use AI agents — autonomous software systems capable of performing complex tasks — to facilitate collaboration between scientists working on related problems across different countries, institutions, and disciplines.
The concept addresses one of the most significant inefficiencies in global research: duplication of effort. Kornberg noted that researchers in different countries frequently work on identical or closely related problems without being aware of each other's progress. AI agents could continuously scan the global research landscape, identify overlapping work, suggest collaborations, and even propose novel research directions based on the intersection of seemingly unrelated fields.
The Opensci Platform: Rewarding Scientists with Blockchain
The summit also served as the launch venue for Opensci, a revolutionary AI-blockchain platform that allows scientists to catalogue discoveries on an immutable ledger and receive direct financial rewards as digital tokens. Stuart Haber, co-inventor of the original blockchain concept (whose 1991 paper is cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper), attended the launch and championed the platform's potential to establish cryptographic provenance not just for scientific discoveries but for all digital content — providing a technical weapon against deepfakes and misinformation.
Canada-UAE AI Partnership Takes Shape
The summit saw a significant Canadian AI delegation led by SCALE AI, Canada's AI-focused supercluster. Selected from over 200 applicants, the delegation built on a memorandum of understanding signed in October 2025 by Canada's Minister of AI and Digital Innovation. The goal was to convert the framework agreement into concrete business partnerships and technology collaborations with UAE counterparts.
Canada's AI ecosystem — centered on Toronto, Montreal, and Edmonton — is considered one of the world's most advanced, with deep expertise in machine learning, natural language processing, and autonomous systems. The UAE's AI ecosystem — anchored by Dubai's AI Campus, the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in Abu Dhabi, and substantial government investment — complements Canada's strengths with access to data, government-scale deployment opportunities, and proximity to rapidly growing MENA and South Asian markets.
Key Summit Outcomes and Announcements
- World Laureates Association HQ: Global headquarters relocated from China to Dubai, establishing the emirate as a center for scientific leadership
- AI Agent Network: Nobel laureate Prof. Kornberg's initiative to connect global researchers through AI-powered collaboration agents
- Opensci Platform: AI-blockchain research platform launched, allowing scientists to earn digital tokens for discoveries
- Canada-UAE AI Partnership: SCALE AI delegation formalized business collaborations with UAE counterparts
- AI Wearable Health: Oura CEO Tom Hale demonstrated biometric AI predicting health outcomes years in advance
- AI Governance Call: Laureates unanimously called for international AI governance frameworks before technology outpaces regulation
- Deepfake Counter-Measures: Stuart Haber promoted cryptographic provenance as a technical solution to AI-generated misinformation
Why Dubai for a Science Summit?
The choice of Dubai as the venue for the inaugural World Laureates Summit raised eyebrows in some quarters — the city is better known for skyscrapers, luxury tourism, and financial services than for scientific research. But the UAE's science and technology credentials have been building quietly and substantially:
The Hope Mars Mission, launched in 2020, made the UAE the first Arab nation and fifth entity worldwide to reach Mars orbit. The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in Abu Dhabi is the world's first graduate-level university dedicated entirely to AI. The UAE's national AI strategy, overseen by the world's first Minister of AI (Omar Al Olama), has deployed AI across government services at a scale and speed that few countries can match. And now, with the WLA headquarters and the Opensci platform based in Dubai, the emirate has concrete institutional anchors for its scientific ambitions.
The Summit's Message to the World
The World Laureates Summit delivered a message that transcended any single announcement or prediction. By bringing 150+ of the world's greatest scientific minds to Dubai, the event established that the most important conversations about humanity's technological future are no longer confined to Silicon Valley, Boston, London, or Beijing. Dubai is now part of that conversation — not as a passive observer, but as a host, convener, and increasingly, a participant in shaping the direction of global science.
For the scientific community, the summit offered both hope and urgency: hope in AI's potential to solve humanity's greatest challenges, and urgency in the need to govern it wisely before its trajectory becomes unalterable. For Dubai, it affirmed that the emirate's ambition to be a global knowledge hub is backed by institutional commitments — the WLA, Opensci, the AI agent network — that give substance to the vision.
The inaugural World Laureates Summit is expected to become an annual fixture on Dubai's events calendar, growing alongside the World Governments Summit as a platform where the world's best scientists engage directly with the world's most powerful decision-makers. In a world where the gap between scientific capability and governance capacity is widening, that bridge may be the most important thing Dubai builds.
