Pakistan’s AI Paradox: Exporting Talent, Importing Dependency

Brigadier Mohammad Yasin (Retired) and Raheel Yawar

In the past few months, the United States has cut almost 80,000 jobs. Similarly, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Australia have done the same.

About 50 per cent of such jobs were from the technology sector. AI-driven job cuts in developed countries have become a theme in the past year.

The capital saved from job reductions is being allocated to build technology-related infrastructures such as data centres. When these data infrastructures are expanded, and more data centres are built, more jobs will be cut, especially in customer service and in administrative roles. Such displaced workers face shifting dynamics.

A 2025 International Labour Organisation (ILO) study found that while about 25 per cent of global workers are in jobs with some exposure to AI, only 3.3 per cent are in the highest category. The report says that AI will transform and augment jobs rather than eliminate them.

Also, the jobs that have been cut because of AI are a fraction of corporate restructuring. For example, although in 2025 the US firms cut over 1.17 million jobs, only 55,000 of such jobs were because of AI.

Where the AI is cutting jobs, it is also creating new jobs. The World Economic Forum report of 2025 says that AI created 11 million new jobs while displacing 9 million, resulting in a gain of two million jobs.

As the AI giants get ready for their record-breaking Initial Public Offerings (IPO), they’re side-stepping conversations about job displacement. White-collar job disappearance has not gone unnoticed, nor has the overestimation of AI by the corporations that stand to gain the most from it, and people are asking questions about its limitations in STEM and automation.

“Paris, France: Dozens of mathematicians signed a declaration on Tuesday (June 2, 2026), calling for the discipline to resist beating the drum for AI developers. The “Laiden Declaration”, backed by over 150 professors from across the world, including Europe, Japan, and the US, warned governments especially not to “believe in the hype” about systems’ math abilities.

AI opens new and exciting opportunities, but it also raises questions that cannot be left unexamined. According to the International Mathematical UNION (IMU) Vice President, the research of mathematics must be guided by human judgment, fair and transparent practices, and the shared value of the global mathematical community.”

(The News International, Islamabad, June 3, 2026)

The aforementioned effects have started to trickle into Pakistan, which has already been susceptible to brain drain. Since April 2022, more than half a million skilled and unskilled workers have left Pakistan to seek a better future in other countries.

As per the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment, in 2025, outward migration reached 762,499. Category-wise, 13,667 highly skilled information Technology (IT) professionals. And 222,171 doctors, engineers, technicians, nurses, accountants, and teachers emigrated from Pakistan.

A well-researched study by Dr Nadeem Ul Haque of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), quoted by Henna Ahsan, explains that the main reasons for leaving the country by the highly skilled workers are a lack of job opportunities, inadequate personal protection, and an uncertain future.

According to Dr Shahid of PIDE, there is no space in Pakistan for creative thinkers and for those with cutting-edge abilities.

Other reasons for highly skilled professionals migrating include: a substantial wage gap between Pakistan and developed countries, reduced focus on developing high technology infrastructures, and priority being given to importing technology rather than developing it indigenously.

Pakistan lacks large data sets, data centres, and industry-academia integration. There is hardly any collaboration between universities, industry, R&D institutions, and the government policymaking. Universities’ research is often not need-based.

Studies show that the adoption of AI by the big technology firms has not stopped the migration of highly skilled professionals from the developing world. Assessing Pakistan specifically, should we encourage and allow brain drain because it would reduce unemployment and would also result in enhanced, much-needed foreign exchange through remittance by the migrant Pakistanis?

It would also facilitate technology transfer when the highly skilled professionals return to Pakistan to share their valuable knowledge and experience. But the disadvantages of brain drain outweigh the advantages.

Pakistan will continue to depend on foreign technology rather than developing its own infrastructure, data sets, data centres, and computing. As a result, Pakistan will remain technically backward.

Pakistan must combat the risk of falling behind and must develop its own comparable and competing technologies. Universities’ research should be based on needs.

There should be close collaboration between universities, industry, R&D institutions and government policymaking. Pakistan must develop long-term plans to strengthen these linkages.

An internship in industries should be compulsory for engineering graduates to earn a degree. Universities and industry must closely collaborate to undertake need-driven projects.

Pakistan should establish a national AI data infrastructure initiative, prioritising the creation of Urdu and regional-language datasets to build AI systems suited to local needs. The R&D budget should be at least 2 per cent of GDP.

(Brigadier Mohammad Yasin (Retired) is a Chartered Engineer and a Distinguished Advisor Emeritus at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Islamabad, Pakistan. Raheel Yawar is a Software Engineer and works on Applied AI with a leading technological organization in the United States. The views expressed in this article are their own and do not necessarily relate to their organisations.)