ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Ahmed Farooq, on Sunday emphasized the growing potential of collaboration between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the field of information technology (IT), saying that both countries had “a lot to offer” to each other in this regard.
The remarks came at a virtual tech-talk session, “AI: The Story of the New Wave – Opportunities and Risks,” hosted in Islamabad by the Pakistani embassy in Riyadh.
The event featured discussions led by Tariq Khan, a generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) expert and enterprise strategist at Pakistan’s Systems Ltd. tech company, and drew representatives from leading Saudi firms.
Addressing the event, Ambassador Farooq said the Pakistani mission in Saudi Arabia had been diligently working over the past year and a half to strengthen ties between tech industries of both nations.
“We believe that both countries have a lot to offer each other,” he said. “Greater collaboration between the tech sectors of both countries would be mutually beneficial.”
The Pakistani diplomat underscored that Pakistan’s IT sector had grown over the decades and included some of the best global IT service providers, stressing the importance of IT in Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and the opportunities it presented for Pakistani professionals.
Saudi Arabia is consolidating its economy on modern lines under Vision 2030, which is a strategic development framework intended to cut the Kingdom’s reliance on oil by developing public service sectors such as IT, health, education, infrastructure, recreation and tourism.
“Significant investments are being made for developing capacities of local human resource and startups, and now we are seeing a thriving tech ecosystem in this country (Pakistan),” Ambassador Farooq said, urging for more direct interactions between Pakistani and Saudi tech companies and startups to foster deeper connections.
He noted that Pakistani educational institutions produced around 25,000 IT graduates annually, who were gaining relevant work experience across sectors such as AI, cybersecurity, and gaming.
“It is important to note that Pakistani companies are developing products and services across all IT fields creating a skilled workforce in the process,” the Pakistani diplomat said.
Additionally, he said, the Pakistani embassy in Riyadh maintained liaison with all relevant stakeholders.
“For example, we have shared Saudi vocational curriculum and requirements with Pakistani training institutions so that training programs for the Pakistani workforce can be adapted according to Saudi requirements thereby ensuring that our skilled professionals are equipped to meet relevant Saudi market requirements,” the ambassador said.
In his speech, Khan discussed the relevance of GenAI, capable of generating text, images, videos, or other data using generative models, and its potential in various thriving sectors in Saudi Arabia. He said his firm, Systems Ltd, had been approached by petroleum and oil companies in Saudi Arabia to explore AI capabilities for process optimization.
“Smart building in residential projects has a lot of potential between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in terms of AI and intelligent decision-making tools and optimization tools,” Khan said, highlighting the potential for collaboration in smart grid management, energy material development and optimizing electricity and water usage in new residential projects.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia enjoy strong economic, defense and religious ties. The Kingdom is home to over 2.7 million Pakistani expatriates, serving as the top source of remittances for the cash-strapped South Asian country.
In recent years, Pakistani tech firms have also been attending the annual LEAP exhibition, which showcases cutting-edge technology, artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives and innovations, in Riyadh to exhibit their IT prowess and innovative products.
AI could significantly benefit health care and insurance sectors in Saudi Arabia amid the Kingdom’s shift toward an insurance-based health care system, according to Khan. Pakistan’s expertise in health care workflow automation could be valuable in this context.
“Pakistan can help there a lot” the expert said. “We have not only AI companies that can automate health care processing and documentation, but we also have multiple companies in the country that already do, health care workflow automation.”
Speaking about concerns regarding displacement of jobs due to GenAI, Khan compared it to the airline industry and said while some jobs could be affected in the short term, new opportunities would emerge with the transformation.
“Gen AI will only increase the avenues and the places where we need help, and businesses will transform,” he said. “That’s why they will still require more people, just like airline industry that I mentioned, jobs are not going away in the long run.”
