Building Pakistan’s AI era.
Pakistan’s digital economy is growing quickly, with a young workforce, a large domestic market and a globally connected base of freelancers and software talent. Yet it remains narrow, and much of the technology industry is focused on lower-margin outsourced work.
AI offers a route to move up the value chain. It can boost productivity, help smaller businesses build software, accelerate research and product development, and enable Pakistani firms and creators to sell higher-value services worldwide.
Today, we’re publishing a report on Pakistan’s AI opportunity. We estimate that AI has the potential to add Rs 4.4 trillion (US$16 billion) to Pakistan’s GVA. Realising it will mean turning enthusiasm into confident use, helping the technology sector capture more value at home, and ensuring smaller firms and communities are not left behind.
Here are five opportunities and priorities from AI we looked at in Pakistan:
If SMEs adopted AI at the same rate as large enterprises, they could unlock Rs 1.5 trillion (US$5.2 billion) in additional value by 2035, equivalent to 1.3% of GDP.
The biggest benefits come when people know how to use AI in more advanced ways. Among the online adults sampled in Pakistan, 22% are “light users” of AI, using it mainly for simple chat and drafting; 56% are “intermediate users”; and 16% qualify as “AI Super Users”.
By generating and ranking new ideas, AI systems could help scientists and researchers in Pakistan explore twice as many plausible hypotheses each year, increasing the chances of breakthrough discoveries in both the private and public sectors.
In our polling, 36% of workers said they wanted to better understand how AI models work, 39% wanted to learn more about practical use cases, and 46% wanted to know how to prompt AI models more effectively.
In our polling, more than 82% of people in Pakistan said it was important for AI developers to incorporate safeguards such as pre-release testing, independent verification, and greater protection for children and other vulnerable users.
The report also looks at how AI could help Pakistan move into higher-value digital activity. AI-enabled coding tools could reduce software development time by 29%, while deeper adoption could increase the value added of Pakistan’s IT sector by 5.6%, contributing Rs 290 billion (US$1 billion) to GVA each year. AI could also generate an additional Rs 210 billion (US$740 million) in annual IT exports and Rs 150 billion (US$520 million) in annual creative exports.
Pakistan’s opportunity is not simply to adopt AI faster, but to use it better. With the right skills, safeguards and access, AI can help more people and businesses take part in the next wave of growth.