Redefined priorities, swift decision-making inevitable for Pakistan’s development: President

President Dr Arif Alvi on Tuesday said that the redefined priorities and swift decision-making were inevitable to make Pakistan join the bandwagon of the fast-developing world.

The president, addressing the 3rd LCCI IT Excellence Recognition Ceremony here, said that the creation of talent and investment in human capital was the fastest route to achieve progress.

Organised by the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industries, the ceremony marked the distribution of awards among the excelling IT startups and companies.

The president, impressed by the remarkable progress of artificial intelligence, also shared with the audience a comprehensive presentation on exponential growth in AI prepared by ChatGPT within just six minutes which otherwise could take days or even weeks.

He said information technology was the only sector in which Pakistan could achieve excellence by investing in human capital as in the modern era, the human intellect was far more important than natural resources.

He said the establishment of IT industry took considerably lesser time than establishing a brick-and-mortar industrial unit.

Similarly, he said Pakistan could take benefit from the IT educational tools to educate its 27 million out-of-school children.

Exemplifying the process of genome sequencing, the president said IT sector provided exponential growth, thus creating numerous opportunities to excel.

He said, on the one hand, the world felt scared of tremendous progress made AI and was thinking to decelerate its pace, but on the other hand, Pakistan has not yet joined that bandwagon which needed to be given serious thought.

President Alvi said that based on the fast pace of AI, one could predict that the AI would write software by itself and also achieve the capability to read human minds within the next 10 years.

Recalling his efforts to promote artificial intelligence and quantum computing in Pakistan, the president said the country needed more inspiration and creating talent.

Apprising the audience of opportunities of learning through technology, President Alvi said Khan Academy, a non-profit organisation, was introducing an AI-based system of providing a dedicated teacher to every student to teach them the subject of choice.

He said the country could not be run through 1-2% educated people rather there was a need to redefine the priorities and focus on creating more talent to exploit the immense potential in the information technology sector.

President of LCCI Kashif Anwar also addressed the ceremony and urged the government to introduce tax incentives for the IT industry and establish IT parks to make the start-ups grow.