The UAE is not alone. Authoritarian countries like China have a built-in competitive advantage when it comes to AI development, largely owing to their reliance on domestic surveillance, which fuels demand. Facial-recognition technologies, for example, are used by these regimes not just to enhance public safety but also as powerful tools for monitoring their populations and suppressing dissent.
This leaves out that China is far less ethnically diverse than the USA. I'm sure you can better tune facial recognition software as a result. Look at all the problems that have occurred over time with facial recognition failure on Black faces that have embarrassed the likes of Microsoft and Google.