In this special collaborative episode of Below the Fold, recorded during the Dubai AI Festival, we sit down with Martin Yates, Government Tech Advisor at Presight, to explore what it really means to build a "smart nation." From deploying AI for public sector innovation to ensuring ethical governance and digital trust, Martin breaks down how AI can empower governments to deliver citizen-first services, achieve data sovereignty, and design scalable infrastructure for the future. Joined by Naveen Bharadwaj, CEO of Trescon, this episode—produced in collaboration with Date With Tech Podcast, Launch.fndry, and Trescon—dives into the real-world strategies, use cases, and challenges of national digital transformation.
🔍 Key Topics Covered:
📍 Recorded at the Dubai AI Festival, 2025.
📲 Follow us for more in-depth episodes on AI, tech, and innovation in the MENA region.
[00:00:00] Hello everyone. Welcome to this edition of Date with Tech, brought to you by Recon in association with Launch Foundry and below the fold. Today I have with me Martin Yates from Pre-site a G 42 company. Martin, welcome to date with Tech. Thank you so much. It's a great honor to be here. Yeah, happy to have you as well.
Martin, before we get started about some of the serious emerging tech and AI discussions. Uh, your background is quite interesting. You have defense, you have government policy, you have mobility. How have you switched between these different, uh, roles and different hats and what's been the core of all these, uh, transitions?
Okay. Well thanks for looking at my profile. Yeah, I realize. So, so let me share with you when I realize when I look back at those profiles and positions, I start to go, I'm not a teenager anymore, so that was my first [00:01:00] observation, but thanks. Uh, yeah, look, I'm, I've been really blessed to have had like many different sort of, uh, opportunities.
Um, I was originally born in the uk so I've been working a lot in the defense. Space, um, and how to say then that sort of say, well, you know, defense is, is great, but the, the salary wasn't quite there, so oil and gas looked like the place to be. Uh, so, uh, I went over to the oil and gas industry, spent some years there on remote platforms and, uh, yeah, essentially then, um, one, one of my other key sort of like.
Career milestones was switching into the automotive industry. And so that was Mercedes-Benz. That was just like nine and a half years plus started in Germany and then they moved me to a country called Singapore, which I couldn't find on the map originally 'cause it's quite a small place back then. But everybody know.
But yeah. Yeah. So, um, so that was a, you know, and again, it was a beautiful country and we, we helped do the transformation across the Asia Pacific region. So, so that was absolutely awesome. And, you know, I fell in love with that country so much. I said, you know, what do I have to do to take the citizenship?
They said, well, you have to [00:02:00] terminate your British citizenship. I was like, oh, okay then. So the Queen wouldn't like that. Yeah. Yeah. People thought I was smart that it was to do with Brexit, but I said no. I said, now I should take the credit for that. Um, no. So then I, I took a. The new nationality of Singaporean and, uh, basically joined with government and, uh, the government party in terms of supporting the vision for Singapore.
Right. So not only was, you know, I employed the, then, uh, I, I moved to Dell Technologies as the global CTO for Smart Cities, and we built new platforms within, within Dell. That we'd export internationally. And, uh, you know, again, on that journey, it was based in Singapore. We eventually, I said I took the whole path of Singapore citizenship, then I was invited to help, uh, build Singapore, you know, help to sort of help define the standards.
Help to define the security standards that you need. Because if you are turning your complete country into a digital country, you know, you better make sure that you're really protecting it. Right. So there's a lot of new standards that had to be sort of created around that. And so that was in [00:03:00] incredibly important.
And, you know, literally just, um, a, a few years ago I'd been visiting the UAE, it's an amazing place. And, uh, I got the opportunity. Someone gave me a phone call and said, oh, you know, why don't you look at the UAE? And I said, well, why not it For me, it was almost like I've been to most places, but I've never really spent time here.
And it, it looked like the place where artificial intelligence and digital transformation was. Really moving at a tremendous speed. So, you know, I felt that there was a lot of value I could add to that. So, yeah, so here I am, uh, three years later in, you know, in the, uh, pre-site as you, as you mentioned, it's a G 42 company and we're, we're building amazing things.
Welcome to the Uua e one of the coolest, smartest tech savvy countries. And uh, absolutely I think three years. You would've experienced this in the last three years because the leadership that we have here, the infrastructure, the innovation, I don't wanna influence your thoughts, but I've been living here for the last 15 years and I just love this place.
Yeah. Uh, speaking of, uh, yours, you know, the transition and how you've, [00:04:00] uh, done a lot of work from a smart nation standpoint and a smart city building standpoint, uh, of course is also, uh, a smart nation that most people are, are quite familiar with, right? Pre-site part of G 42 is also one of those companies that's helping enable.
U ae and a lot of other countries with their respective, uh, smart nation vision. So can you talk to us about some of the, the amazing work that you guys are doing in country and perhaps some of the work that you might be doing outside of the UA that uh, people are not familiar of? Yeah, absolutely. And, and you know, I think when we are within the UAE and, and G 42 and pre-site is a name that that's known, but as we, you know, our market is international, we are expecting to see a, a, a lot of our super accelerated growth.
Outside, even outside of GC. So, uh, like for example, recently, the, um, we've, we've signed, uh, uh, contracts to be able to go and implement smart cities in Albania. Wow. Right. 20 smart cities in Albania. So yeah, we're, we're moving towards Europe. We have Kazakhstan and, but, but one thing that sort of ties them all together is [00:05:00] really about, we are solving problems that leaders have in their cities.
So the biggest problem, and I, and I mentioned this on a previous session, that mobility. Yeah, mobility's a lovely word, but what I really get down to it, it's about transportation and it's about not being in traffic queue. Come to my city, Bangalore, which is known for being a tech capital, but now it's also known for being a horrendous traffic capital.
So I think we could take some help from you guys. Uh, yeah, absolutely. So it was, again, it was so funny, I was on just a session earlier and I said, you know, there's not much point in having a smart city if you can't breathe. Yeah. Right. So we do need to really double down and, and focus on are we planning cities, right?
Is our transportation's policy right? Is our overall mobility strategy. Right. And. You know that you, you are changing systems that are decades and decades old, so it's not that easy. So whilst you have all that technology available to you now, it doesn't help if you don't have the support, if you don't have the budget to be able to implement or you don't have the policies in place to support you or [00:06:00] indeed, the, the, the spirit of everyone wanting to follow that same vision.
Yeah. Right. Because, because that's typically where, you know the difference between talking smart city and actually. Delivering a smart city is 80% based on people. True. The technology we have, you know, we, we build amazing platforms right here in the ue. We code here in the UE for the export markets. Not only is it for the ue, but we go international.
But a, again, I can give you all the best technology, but what will it help you if. People are, different. Agencies are fighting over different areas of data control, for example. Right. Yeah. You will never be smart if, unless you figure out how to collaborate and collaboration is not just a word, it's a, a set of actions that need to be done.
Absolutely. I liked what you said. You said you're coding in the ua, so you're coding in the ua, but you're coding for the world coding 'cause you are helping a lot of other countries Also, you talked about how a, a smart city or a smart nation is all about its people. The infrastructure, the traffic management, so the basics, the people, [00:07:00] process, technology pretty much applies when it comes to enabling a, a true, smart city.
Yeah. Or a true smart nation as well, right? Yeah. Those are templates that, that carry across or wherever you go. Yeah. You know, literally you could be put on a, on an airplane blindfolded and you turn up in a country and say, and you kind of already know what the problems might be there. There's always a set of problems which need to be addressed first.
Yeah. And then there's those secondary ones which are like value add. Like for example, um, you know, recycling for example. Right. Or a, a greater focus on sustainability. And that's a huge topic, I think with a massive urbanization, a mass concentration of people within cities. This traffic issue as well as the sustainability and the carbon emission issue is, is, is ballooning.
But I think there's a lot of action also that's being taken now for you guys as preyed. Um, where does artificial intelligence fit in solving all of this? Is it, is it that you know, that silver bullet or you've got a combination of a lot of other things with it? Okay. Where does it fit in? It fits in everywhere.
Yeah. Uh, look, by the way, this is interesting. For decades we've been [00:08:00] using artificial intelligence. Not just presale G two, but I mean, all organizations been using some, but it's been very, uh, embedded in systems much deeper in the background. But the costs, of course. A few years ago, generative AI came, demo democratized this whole ability to use AI to everyone using natural language.
So that was a, that was a sort of a huge leap. We are con continue to see that change Yeah. As, as people evolve and, and want to do bigger and smarter things. Yeah. True. You said. AI is pretty much getting used everywhere. Right. Uh, I, I wanna hear from you either your personal opinion or that of the, the business.
Hmm. Um, what's your take on, uh, ethics, governance, security, as well as, you know, topics like data sovereignty and data governance in this AI era, in this so-called Yeah. Smart, interconnected, integrated era. And, and that's a great question. I don't think it's really a, a new question just for the ai. Yeah. I mean, you know, since we had the internet, since people could discover that you can share things, um, and, uh, you know, [00:09:00] it was very convenient to do, you know, the, the picture postings of my, this is my status, this is what I had for lunch and dinner, and, and, and so much is already being shared.
Yeah. Across the world. And we, and we know that right? Across various different organizations. So, so that journey of, um, you know, data governance and ethics, a lot of that's already been explored. But now as we go into ai, of course we, we, we come back to that and we say, you know, is all that information, that decision making being put to a good cause, right?
In terms of those, all those various different sets of data points. So ethics is, is very much determined by the country that you're in, of course, because different, you know, different cultures, perhaps different political systems will have different ways in which sharing is accepted and not accepted. But I, I wanna come to a very important point, regardless of that model, the cybersecurity that protects this, and I was just having a great conversation with someone earlier.
I said, look, as we move towards digital transformation, [00:10:00] as we become more and more reliant on systems. We've also got to think about what if it wasn't there? Right? What if there was no electricity for a day, a week? A good example, by the way, that scares me. What? I dunno if you were traveling through London a few weeks ago, but there was a, a fire Yeah.
In a transformer station. The whole of Heath Row international book shut down. Yes. You know, up to 18 hours and, and you just can't imagine. But one of the worlds, uh, most, uh, you know, most traveled airport ro so Yeah. Yeah. You wouldn't imagine it. And so, so you've got three power stations around, but. For, for whatever reason.
And then they, they've done all the deep due diligence on this now, of course. But they said, well, you know, we have to learn how to know that something's gonna have a power outage and we have to know how to reconnect the power. Yeah. And it's got to be faster than 10 hours. So that's just a very small example.
Just a small example Yeah. Of the kind of things we need to think about. So we need to think about digital resilience. Right. And, and enhance [00:11:00] cybersecurity. So those are the things I would honestly say that keep me awake night, that dependency. So we have to be mindful and everything we build and everything we design, we have to design that resilience.
And do you agree that, uh, the level of maturity now and the level of involvement and participation from, um, boards, chairmans founders, owners in conversations around digital resilience, cybersecurity, proactive cybersecurity measures as opposed to reactive, uh, uh, measures is actually quite higher now?
Quite heightened? Oh yeah. It, it, it's always funny the, the, the motivation for fire insurance goes up when your house has been on fire. Right, exactly. So, so I think unfortunately, but yeah, exactly. And I think like most people have had some experience somewhere in the world of, of something that, that's gone wrong.
Yeah. Um, so Izzy know from a board perspective, has it become a, a, a line item will absolutely. Are we doing the absolute best in it? You, you need to be continually going back to your plan and revisiting it. It's not, it's never enough. It's never, yeah. You, you know, you never can spend [00:12:00] enough on resilience, but you have to be realistic.
There, there has to be a line, um, from, from your risk management perspective, but with all the new challenges. You can't just say, oh, okay, here's my plan for one year. That doesn't work. Yeah, right. You, you almost have to be revisiting it. On a daily basis. And that's where AI can come in. 'cause AI can rerun scenarios and situations that you weren't thinking about or you don't have time to fire drill true, so to speak.
So, so AI itself is an essential tool in building resilience. Yeah. Yeah. Now, um, Martin, because you're also in, you are primarily a strategy advisory and how to bring in communities and cultures together. Guy, uh, smart cities and smart nations are. A combination of, of course, government, policies, regulations, vision will.
Then you've got the enterprises, and then you've got the people, the general masses. You've got youth, you've got different generations, different cultures, different races. There is so much diversity out there in terms of the types of people, the types of entities, the types of thinking, [00:13:00] et cetera, et cetera.
Right now. While technology, infrastructure, emergence, et cetera, can all be addressed, and let's assume that we are doing a great job from a culture standpoint. Where do you think tech can help or not help in bringing everybody together? I. Actually building a true smart nation, which is, uh, an intelligent nation, not just by technology means, but by also the human intelligence and the collective of the human intelligence.
Yeah. Well, I think you've nailed it there, to be honest, right? You know, um, what do they say? You can, you can bring a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. Well, absolutely. You can tell people about ai, but it doesn't mean that you deliver the outcome, uh, and in a human-centric journey, which we're all moving into, whether we like it or not, right?
Uh, the reality is that we are being more and more surrounded by digital. So it's absolutely essential that, um, you keep focus on what it means to be sort of human, what it means to, for those and, and for me, you know, like 80% of my time and then, and it could be between 70 and 90%. Mm. It's not on the [00:14:00] technology.
Yeah. If you want the technology to make your dreams happen, we probably have it. Yeah. Right. And if you don't, and if you don't have it. We'll build it for you. Right. But that doesn't help if everyone is not on board. Right. And that really comes a little bit now down to the leadership of the country mm-hmm.
And the education, uh, towards people and saying, look, this is not the traditional university journey of the past. Right. Yeah. Four years to learn this. You probably have four days to learn something you'd have in four years. Right. I mean, one of my recommendations, I always say to people, you wanna know what's happening tomorrow?
Watch a YouTube video. 'cause someone's probably just released a new product that does something amazing that wasn't there the day before. Yeah, right. It might be obsolete in a week from now. Yeah. Yeah. So, so you know, for myself as a strategy advisors, like how do I build resilience in change? Knowing that it's gonna change.
And you know, I used to do plans like really long, long time ago. That was a 10 year plan, and then it went down to five years, you know, for accuracy purposes, right? Three years and then it went down to [00:15:00] three years. And now like, okay, you can get it about right for 12 months, and then we need to build this buffer of changing.
So how do I change my organization to accept and, and reboot myself again? Yeah. You know, this, this reinvention of yourself, it's, it's pretty hard. Yeah. Right. But you can do it. That's what's gonna make the difference in the world. And so bringing all the people together, the stakeholder management, you've gotta bring everyone with you.
'cause if you don't bring everyone with you, you end up in a, you know, in a society that's becoming polarized. True. And, and diversified. Which, which is not a good thing. The, the new world demands us to be together. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I think the, the unification can happen at a much faster pace. The transformation can also happen at a much faster pace because you now have the collective power.
I. Collective power of people, their intelligence, and then ai, of course, supporting. But again, you need to, you know, and it's like everyone, right? Yeah. In any task in our life, you know, you have to have a certain motivation to drive you towards that. So what drives [00:16:00] the average citizen towards that? Or do they just say, you know, I give up.
I don't need to be part of this. Something will just happen for me. That's not the world you need to live in now. Like everyone must be on board, right? From, from the early school kids all the way through to seniors. Yeah. Right. And remember we've got an aging population. True. Right. And this has been like one of the world popular right now is people are becoming much, much older and the young ones are not replacing.
So of course AI will do a lot in that space, but we still have to look after the, the silver generation of people. Yeah. Yeah. What are we doing for them? How are we making their lives better? Is there anything we can do to keep their brains active? Right. And so bridging the digital divide or bridging the Absolutely.
The gap in rapid change that's happening all around them and not focusing only on a, a particular sector or a segment of the community, but holistically looking at everybody. Absolutely. Absolutely. But again, people have to understand, and it's, it's no different with us. We, we have to understand why we're gonna do what we're gonna do.
Yeah. Because if we don't. We want the best things to happen, not the worst things. True. Right. [00:17:00] So you, you, you know, whether it's at the government level, whether it's at the community level, people need to take leadership and say, these are the changes we need to make. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, let's say I'm the, the head of AI country and I wanna work with, uh, pre-site.
What would be those top three to five things that I can expect from pre-site? As a country to become smarter, more intelligent, technology driven, and perhaps to transform my digital, uh, economy. Okay. Wow. That, that's quite, there's a lot to unpack there, right? Um, so, so the realistic approach that we take with everyone is like, what problems are you trying to solve?
I. And what problems haven't you thought about yet? Mm. Right, because very often, you know, people see what's immediately in front of them. But, you know, good consultancy, good advisory means that by the way, this will happen. This will happen, this will happen. According the Black Force. Have you thought about a, a good example would be climate change, right?
That the seawater, sea water's rising, right? Floodings are increasing. We've seen across the whole world, the floods have increased everywhere. Right? [00:18:00] So how are we planning for that? What systems are we putting in place that we can plan our cities, plan our country better? Do we understand the use of our resource?
We understand the use of our human assets, right? Do we have that complete picture? And so, you know, for us, we, we look at it very holistic and say, what is, where do you wanna get to? And these are the things that are gonna change and these are the steps you need to take. So digital transformation is a kind of a big word.
It sort of covers everything. Yeah. But we need to break that down into. Usable data. Yeah. And, and half the problem in the world today, you know, the reason AI often underperforms expect and the expectations of what people have is it wasn't fed the right data. True. Right. I mean, you've probably seen that in the early days where it comes up with Yeah.
Yeah. So, so the secret of success that, that I takers advisory and, and both the, the organization is. If we don't get the data right, if we don't train the data right. Don't expect those amazing results. Hmm. That you've read about in [00:19:00] the magazines or in, you've seen in the, in the news. Right. So it's all about the data.
It's all about being able to process. So, so we look at that as a model, collecting all the information in from sensors, collecting it in for different government agencies, making sense, and being predictive, not just. What happened last month or what's happening now, but you know, you've gotta be so much smarter in future.
You gotta be a predictive society. A predictive country. Yeah, absolutely. So focusing on problems of today, tomorrow, what you know, what you don't know. Uncovering the blind spots, then making sure that you're collecting the right set and the right amount of data. Structured, unstructured whatnot. And then with the power of your predictive analytics and using the power of artificial intelligence.
Yeah, helping you truly become, so I, as the head of AI Nation now, can claim that. My country is smart because I chose to work with a partner that helped me truly uncover my blind spots and solve everything in the process. Yeah, absolutely. Dead smart on right there. So yeah, look. Um, and if you have that country, which [00:20:00] the country that you're talking about, we need to you then we should start talking.
Uh, I will be more than happy to roll out a template for you and a, a, uh, ab. Absolutely. Now let's, um, that's all, all, all serious is nice, right? But I typically like to also. Talk a little bit about non-serious stuff. So I wanna ask you a couple of questions more personally directed to you. Okay? And this is not preset, this is not D 42 opinion.
It's, uh, mark Nates, and this is unscripted you. I dunno what you're gonna ask me, right? Do you think AI will replace your job? Cliche question, but I love to ask everyone. That's that's, that's like the, yeah. Will it replace my job? Uh, how long would, how many things we talking about? Look, um, I, I think.
There's AI is is basically going through different stages of maturity. Um, will it replace my job? I dunno if it'll get my kind of cranky humor. Sometimes it won't. Um, but you know, I say with super intelligence, I won't quite, uh, yeah. Underestimate that. Yeah, no. Look, uh, I, I think. The decades of experience [00:21:00] that have been stored up.
I'm probably a little bit more in that, in that safe zone in terms of replacing jobs. But look, seriously then, and we, we talked this earlier, that people much younger in their careers, those are the guys that really need to sort of tune in and quickly to make sure that, you know, that they become the master of this and not the slave of this.
Absolutely. This has always been like this in history. Absolutely. Right. And so it's, it's no different this time. It's not what you are doing currently. Not advisor, not into strategy, not doing emerging tech, not into defense, oil and gas, smart city building, and the long list of things that you've done. Uh, Martin, what else would you have been doing or what do you think you would've enjoyed?
I'm a, I love being creative. Okay. I tried being an artist that didn't work, but what IF Yeah, yeah. Painting and stuff doesn't work. Well, actually it does in some ways, but I don't think it'll be world class. Although I can use AI now to do it and just write my name and say, well, that is amazing. Yeah. Yeah.
Um, no, like I, I have a passion since, since teenage, I have a absolutely huge passion in music, and I, and I love. Mixing music and beats [00:22:00] and things like that. So Nice. Yeah. Yeah. So I always had this imagination of, uh, being a, sounds weird, I dunno why I'm saying this. A top DJ somewhere in iha, you know, like one of these old guys with the sunglasses, sort of like just loving the tune.
Young. Yeah. Yeah. Something like this. Right. Um. So, so do I I dj. Yeah. So I have, I have all the equipment at home. Uh, so that's, that's probably what I would've done. I dunno if I'd make defense to disco. Yeah. Defense to disco. Yeah. Amusing and rhythm of life. Um, but it's interesting now 'cause we just talked about, you know, uh, changes of jobs.
And, uh, you know, I, I've got my own deck home. I've been exploring with artificial intelligence, you know, music creation and mixing. Yeah. And it's really doing a good job. So maybe I made the right decision to go into the tech and not into the, into that particular area of music. Yeah. I mean, you know, the, I think the creative communities is complaining, but also some of them are happy because with the power of ai, they're now able to produce a lot more and a lot less time, and a lot less cost.
Right. Well, so, well, yeah. I mean, [00:23:00] look at those, those huge, uh, fine art cells, these, these AI pictures. I dunno. I saw one $10 million and it was like, so what did you do? Well, I went to my prompt and I, I did an artistic prompt. It wasn't just an average prompt. Right. And I've made a work of art $10 million.
So like, wow. Everything that we kind of thought was traditional, in one sense, everything's up for change. Yeah. Right. And, and as a mindset, we both need to be like, everyone needs to be like this. Everything starts from in here. So your closing lines, artificial intelligence, uh, if you were to define it or explain it in one line, one sentence, what would it be?
I've never been able to do that because there are too many areas. Uh, yeah. Yeah. That's where you go to your GPT and say, give me the answer, please. Right. Lemme ask. You can do that. You can do that. You don't need me. No. Look, at the end of the day, it's, for me, it's, it's about, um, building on collective human intelligence.
A tool set that enables us to do more. [00:24:00] Fantastic. So collective human intelligence tool set that helps us. To do more or enables us to do more and, and doing more in whether that's in your business, whether that's in your personal life, uh, whether you are managing your country, doing more. Fantastic. And don't delay.
Don't delay now because you might be late already. Right. Ladies and gentlemen, Hugh Grant, I'm sorry. You, you? No, we have, uh, Martin h thank you from, uh, pre-site D 40 Company. It was such a pleasure speaking to you Martin. Pleasure speaking to you too. Thank you.