A Biden administration will give the US an edge in science and artificial intelligence but lessons learnt from this campaign cycle mean Americans must get comfortable with uncertainty and update antiquated voting systems, according to a half dozen futurists who spoke to The National.
“Compared to four years of the Trump administration, [Biden] will be a massive breath of fresh air for science and technology,” Thomas A. Campbell, founder and chief executive of FutureGrasp, said.
President-elect Joe Biden will enter office confronting multiple crises – the Covid-19 pandemic, an economic recession and climate change – that are expected to be addressed through massive investments in science and skilled labour under the new administration.
The virus has killed more than 235,000 Americans and wiped out 20 million jobs, according to a report by former US Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers. Meanwhile, Mr Biden’s campaign pledge is to invest as much as $5 trillion to make the US carbon neutral by 2050.
This approach is in contrast to his predecessor, according to Mr Campbell, who was the first national intelligence officer for technology under former president Barack Obama and president Trump.
“In all my years both outside and inside the US government, I have never seen an administration so dismissive of science and technology” as the Trump administration, he said.
He said a national plan for AI was drafted under Mr Trump, but this was delayed for two years despite "the major reports laying out the need for it at the end of the Obama administration”. The plan was implemented last year.
Mr Campbell expects the Biden White House “will look much more like the earlier Obama administration's eight years – supportive of science, technology and policies that will seek to maintain US leadership”.
Mr Biden is expected to include artificial intelligence in any kind of recovery programme, said Katie King, a board adviser and a member of the UK's All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) task force for the enterprise adoption of AI.
His approach will differ from his predecessor’s "America first" strategy, she added.
“Mr Biden is more likely to collaborate with other nations to further the global development of AI and develop global AI regulations,” she said.
The incoming administration is also likely to take a more nuanced policymaking approach to “other pieces of the puzzle” when it comes to implementing AI, such as privacy, surveillance, misinformation, robotics and developing talent, Ms King said.
But Scott Smith, a managing partner of Changeist, a future foresight consultancy based in the Hague, Netherlands, cautioned that given a Republican majority in the Senate and slimmer Democratic House advantage, “any substantial increase in education investment for competitiveness is likely to be stymied”.
Visas, too, like the H1-B visa for non-immigrant technical workers, may be a sticking point for Republican lawmakers, he said.
“Especially with an electorate that’s shown itself to be possibly more nativist”, Mr Biden may come up short on a campaign promise to lift limits on such visas and remove caps on green cards, he said.
Still, he expects that US competitiveness against other AI global leaders such as China or Israel “is unlikely to change dramatically in the next four years” because the foundations for investment and development were laid a decade ago.
Quantitative futurist Amy Webb is also grappling with the implications of a less decisive victory for Democrats, and what that means for voter surveys.
"The massive 'blue wave' being talked about was in no way guaranteed," Ms Webb, the founder and chief executive of the Future Today Institute, said in an email to The National.
Getting comfortable with uncertainty would upend the American opinion polling process, she said, but that is not necessarily a bad thing since polls are fundamentally flawed.
“There is currently no way to design a poll that reveals someone's deeply held beliefs. Fifty thousand simulations don't reveal truths when you start with bad data," she said.
Either way, the party divide “will force people to confront their cherished beliefs in a way that will be extremely difficult. That's true on both sides.”
Mark Minevich, president of Going Global Ventures and an AI expert, said now is the time to leverage AI to do things like predict election outcomes rather than rely on faulty polling. He also wants to use AI to gauge voter sentiment on social media and weed out disinformation or foreign bots attempting to undermine the democratic process.
"We have to ask ourselves why we continue to rely on antiquated systems, paper ballots and inadequate machines to handle the most important day of our democracy," he wrote in Forbes.
He highlighted the work of Democracy Live, an electronic voting company that has been used in more than 2,000 US jurisdictions since 2008, delivering online and polling place balloting technologies to more than 10 million voters.
In January this year they were used by King County in Washington state to conduct a mobile-only election that recorded and counted more than one million votes.
Once security concerns are addressed, Mr Minevich would like to see tools like Democracy Live more widely used.
"Apps would have to be governmentally designed, regulated, monitored and hosted. How will this cascade from federal all the way to local municipalities? Many questions still need to be answered."
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Company profile
Company: Eighty6
Date started: October 2021
Founders: Abdul Kader Saadi and Anwar Nusseibeh
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Hospitality
Size: 25 employees
Funding stage: Pre-series A
Investment: $1 million
Investors: Seed funding, angel investors
Timeline
2012-2015
The company offers payments/bribes to win key contracts in the Middle East
May 2017
The UK SFO officially opens investigation into Petrofac’s use of agents, corruption, and potential bribery to secure contracts
September 2021
Petrofac pleads guilty to seven counts of failing to prevent bribery under the UK Bribery Act
October 2021
Court fines Petrofac £77 million for bribery. Former executive receives a two-year suspended sentence
December 2024
Petrofac enters into comprehensive restructuring to strengthen the financial position of the group
May 2025
The High Court of England and Wales approves the company’s restructuring plan
July 2025
The Court of Appeal issues a judgment challenging parts of the restructuring plan
August 2025
Petrofac issues a business update to execute the restructuring and confirms it will appeal the Court of Appeal decision
October 2025
Petrofac loses a major TenneT offshore wind contract worth €13 billion. Holding company files for administration in the UK. Petrofac delisted from the London Stock Exchange
November 2025
180 Petrofac employees laid off in the UAE
Company Profile
Name: JustClean
Based: Kuwait with offices in other GCC countries
Launch year: 2016
Number of employees: 130
Sector: online laundry service
Funding: $12.9m from Kuwait-based Faith Capital Holding
Wicked: For Good
Director: Jon M Chu
Starring: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Ethan Slater
Rating: 4/5
The Bloomberg Billionaire Index in full
1 Jeff Bezos $140 billion
2 Bill Gates $98.3 billion
3 Bernard Arnault $83.1 billion
4 Warren Buffett $83 billion
5 Amancio Ortega $67.9 billion
6 Mark Zuckerberg $67.3 billion
7 Larry Page $56.8 billion
8 Larry Ellison $56.1 billion
9 Sergey Brin $55.2 billion
10 Carlos Slim $55.2 billion
White hydrogen: Naturally occurring hydrogen
Chromite: Hard, metallic mineral containing iron oxide and chromium oxide
Ultramafic rocks: Dark-coloured rocks rich in magnesium or iron with very low silica content
Ophiolite: A section of the earth’s crust, which is oceanic in nature that has since been uplifted and exposed on land
Olivine: A commonly occurring magnesium iron silicate mineral that derives its name for its olive-green yellow-green colour
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$1,000 award for 1,000 days on madrasa portal
Daily cash awards of $1,000 dollars will sweeten the Madrasa e-learning project by tempting more pupils to an education portal to deepen their understanding of math and sciences.
School children are required to watch an educational video each day and answer a question related to it. They then enter into a raffle draw for the $1,000 prize.
“We are targeting everyone who wants to learn. This will be $1,000 for 1,000 days so there will be a winner every day for 1,000 days,” said Sara Al Nuaimi, project manager of the Madrasa e-learning platform that was launched on Tuesday by the Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, to reach Arab pupils from kindergarten to grade 12 with educational videos.
“The objective of the Madrasa is to become the number one reference for all Arab students in the world. The 5,000 videos we have online is just the beginning, we have big ambitions. Today in the Arab world there are 50 million students. We want to reach everyone who is willing to learn.”
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COMPANY PROFILE
Company name: Letstango.com
Started: June 2013
Founder: Alex Tchablakian
Based: Dubai
Industry: e-commerce
Initial investment: Dh10 million
Investors: Self-funded
Total customers: 300,000 unique customers every month
The specs: Fenyr SuperSport
Price, base: Dh5.1 million
Engine: 3.8-litre twin-turbo flat-six
Transmission: Seven-speed automatic
Power: 800hp @ 7,100pm
Torque: 980Nm @ 4,000rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 13.5L / 100km
Quick pearls of wisdom
Focus on gratitude: And do so deeply, he says. “Think of one to three things a day that you’re grateful for. It needs to be specific, too, don’t just say ‘air.’ Really think about it. If you’re grateful for, say, what your parents have done for you, that will motivate you to do more for the world.”
Know how to fight: Shetty married his wife, Radhi, three years ago (he met her in a meditation class before he went off and became a monk). He says they’ve had to learn to respect each other’s “fighting styles” – he’s a talk it-out-immediately person, while she needs space to think. “When you’re having an argument, remember, it’s not you against each other. It’s both of you against the problem. When you win, they lose. If you’re on a team you have to win together.”
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
THE BIO
BIO:
Born in RAK on December 9, 1983
Lives in Abu Dhabi with her family
She graduated from Emirates University in 2007 with a BA in architectural engineering
Her motto in life is her grandmother’s saying “That who created you will not have you get lost”
Her ambition is to spread UAE’s culture of love and acceptance through serving coffee, the country’s traditional coffee in particular.
Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week
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Indoor Cricket World Cup - Sept 16-20, Insportz, Dubai
Results:
6.30pm: Maiden Dh165,000 2,000m - Winner: Powderhouse, Sam Hitchcott (jockey), Doug Watson (trainer)
7.05pm: Handicap Dh165,000 2,200m - Winner: Heraldic, Richard Mullen, Satish Seemar
7.40pm: Conditions Dh240,000 1,600m - Winner: Walking Thunder, Connor Beasley, Ahmed bin Harmash
8.15pm: Handicap Dh190,000 2,000m - Winner: Key Bid, Fernando Jara, Ali Rashid Al Raihe
8.50pm: The Garhoud Sprint Listed Dh265,000 1,200m - Winner: Drafted, Sam Hitchcott, Doug Watson
9.25pm: Handicap Dh170,000 1,600m - Winner: Cachao, Tadhg O’Shea, Satish Seemar
10pm: Handicap Dh190,000 1,400m - Winner: Rodaini, Connor Beasley, Ahmed bin Harmash
If you go
The flights
Etihad (etihad.com) flies from Abu Dhabi to Luang Prabang via Bangkok, with a return flight from Chiang Rai via Bangkok for about Dh3,000, including taxes. Emirates and Thai Airways cover the same route, also via Bangkok in both directions, from about Dh2,700.
The cruise
The Gypsy by Mekong Kingdoms has two cruising options: a three-night, four-day trip upstream cruise or a two-night, three-day downstream journey, from US$5,940 (Dh21,814), including meals, selected drinks, excursions and transfers.
The hotels
Accommodation is available in Luang Prabang at the Avani, from $290 (Dh1,065) per night, and at Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp and Resort from $1,080 (Dh3,967) per night, including meals, an activity and transfers.
The President's Cake
Director: Hasan Hadi
Starring: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem
Rating: 4/5
