The Ethical Vacuum at the Heart of Pakistan’s AI Adoption Pakistan's National AI Policy promises a million trained AI professionals and fifty thousand civic AI projects by 2030 — but the country still has no passed data protection law, no AI-specific legislation, and a draft governance framework that exempts government bodies from the rules it sets for everyone else.

Abstract

Pakistan's Federal Cabinet approved the country's first National AI Policy in July 2025, formally launched alongside the Islamabad Artificial Intelligence Declaration in February 2026. It is, on paper, genuinely ambitious: a million trained AI professionals by 2030, fifty thousand civic AI projects, a thousand locally developed AI solutions, new innovation and venture funds, AI Centres of Excellence in major cities, and an AI Council chaired by the IT Minister to oversee all of it. Government agencies are already piloting AI-assisted service delivery, and cities across the country are expanding Safe City camera networks with facial recognition and automated number-plate recognition capabilities, many of them supplied through bilateral agreements with Chinese vendors including Huawei.