Magdalena Konig, general counsel and company secretary at AIQ: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Magdalena Konig (LinkedIn), general counsel and company secretary at AIQ, Adnoc’s JV with G42 company Presight. Edited excerpts from our conversation:

I’m Magdalena Konig. I’m the general counsel and company secretary for AIQ. I’m a UK-qualified and technology lawyer by trade, but have been based and working in the UAE, and was part of the team that brought the joint venture between Adnoc and Presight — AIQ — to fruition.

I’ve been working on the legal, compliance, and governance side of technology for the last 20 years. I joined Adnoc as their group-wide technology lawyer, and as part of Dr. Sultan Al Jaber’s vision for what they wanted to do in the AI space, the company started working with G42 to figure out how they could optimize and utilize AI in their operations for productivity and sustainability. This was five years ago, which is really a testament to the leadership of this country in terms of their forward-thinking.

I was the first ever employee at AIQ, so going from that to building it with the leadership team and growing it into an entity which now has over 15 products, revenue streams, 21 patent applications, and over 100 employees delivering economic value, and health and safety savings, has been a very cool journey.

The company brings together two clear UAE mandates — the AI vision and the net-zero sustainability vision. Our product EnergyAI is definitely one to watch — it’s the first of its kind — and there will be more announcements on that later this year. Other products we have are AR360, which gives a full spectrum view of reservoirs, and RoboWell, which automates well production.

AI is not new. The term was coined in 1950, but now we’re all aware of it — even though we’ve likely been using it for a while already — we need to be thinking about how we develop AI with a humanistic, ethical approach, and apply that to decision making, while maintaining transparency and accountability.

As part of my day job, I look at that for AIQ, but I also speak and write about it frequently. People are pegging AI as being like fire, or like the printing press, or the automobile. It’s a dramatic and influential technology that we need to make sure we’re implementing with plenty of thought around what it means for society, for our children, for manufacturing, etc.

Fundamentally, no technology is bad. It’s what people potentially might do with it that could be bad. So how do we mitigate that? At AIQ as a developer, we look at how we can help our customers do that while they implement our solutions. A big piece of it is education — people need to know and understand what AI is, what an agent is, how it works, to follow the rest of the thinking around AI.

There is no global approach to AI yet. Whether in the US, Europe, the UAE, or China, everyone is thinking about how to regulate AI very differently, and they’re also on different timelines. The UAE takes a geopolitically neutral stance, and I think it takes a very balanced approach in terms of innovation vs. regulation, and takes a helicopter view in terms of what we can do based on use cases from across the world. They’re proactive, but they’re also evaluating how things are going, and what is working and what isn’t, rather than bullishly going ahead and regulating the technology. I personally view this use case-specific approach as being far more useful for ensuring that we have continued innovation.

I am an early bird, and anyone who knows me knows I’m an exercise fiend. Besides my role at AIQ, and as my role in speaking internationally on AI ethics, I’m also a competitive bodybuilder. I believe exercise and keeping your mind and body healthy plays a huge role in your productivity and in being able to bring your best self forward.

I try not to look at my emails early in the morning, but that’s something I find very challenging, because things move so quickly [in this space]. I often try to set my day up by checking what’s happened either overnight or in the morning and reassessing my priority list. I love lists — maybe that comes from being a lawyer — but throughout my day, my priority list gets reshuffled, which is a product of being in such an exciting, dynamic environment.

My day can consist of board meetings, audit committee meetings, and spending a lot of time with our leadership team. I look at everything from patents or trademarks to expansion plans, product development, and agreements that need to be drafted.

I really dislike the idea of a lawyer or someone working in legal being what people call a “business prevention officer.” If you have that type of reputation, no one wants to talk to you. You are nobody’s friend. I want to be a facilitator, and to be able to talk to you about something you want to do from the perspective of: how can I help you achieve that with minimal risk?

The vision and mission for AIQ is being the leading AI business in the energy sector, and I want to facilitate that. I also love talking about AI regulation, governance, and ethics, so in my personal capacity, I want to continue to speak at international events and write articles about this, because we’re at a point in time when we’re all figuring it out as we go, and it’s such a fantastic conversation to be a part of.

I am an amateur bodybuilder at the moment, and I have a competition in three weeks’ time and another four weeks after that, so obviously I want a massive trophy [laughs]. But really, being a bodybuilder for me is less about the end-goal and more about the journey. I never thought I would be a bodybuilder or could ever do it. But if you make a decision and tell yourself that that’s a very self limiting belief, then you can really push yourself.

Going to the gym and lifting weights helps me wind down — it’s my time for myself when I can’t really think about anything else. I love reading as well, particularly books about self-development and psychology, and technology of course. I recently read a book about Clearview AI ; it’s called Your Face Belongs to Us. It’s about surveillance technology. It’s really interesting, a little terrifying, and focuses on the ethical conversation around AI. I also have a beautiful little dog who cuddles me death, who I wind down with as well.

The CEO of the law firm I trained at, who’s a fantastic and very bright individual — with a very dry sense of humor — once said to me “don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.” This applies to so much in life, whether in bodybuilding or how to sell AI in Kazakhstan or facilitate a board meeting with ministers. That’s a statement that I really love and use a lot now myself.

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