Artificial intelligence (AI) is moving beyond the realm of technology. It is becoming economic infrastructure. Access to capable models, computing power, data and skilled people will increasingly shape national competitiveness. That makes China’s proposal at the BRICS summit in New Delhi earlier this month worth examining.

President Xi Jinping has proposed that China lead the creation of a BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa] AI open-source community. It would promote cooperation in developing and applying large language models, organise specialised AI training and build an open ecosystem for participating countries.

For the Global South, this could lower one of the biggest barriers to entering the AI economy.

Building frontier models from scratch requires enormous computing capacity, expensive data centres, vast datasets and specialised talent. Most developing countries cannot match the investments being made by the world’s largest technology companies.

The strategic objective is to become a builder, adapter and exporter of tech solutions

Open-weight models offer another route. Developers can download, adapt and build on them for particular languages, industries and public services. This can reduce the cost of experimentation and allow countries to develop applications suited to their own needs. China has emerged as a major player in this space. Models such as Qwen, DeepSeek, Kimi and GLM have expanded the range of capable systems available outside the leading Western technology companies.

However, open-weight does not necessarily mean fully open-source. Model weights may be available while training data, development code, or other components remain closed. The larger opportunity lies beyond models.

President Xi has also proposed a BRICS digital ecosystem cloud platform, digital-skills training, cooperation in smart manufacturing and an engineer-training alliance. These proposals recognise a basic fact: AI adoption depends on infrastructure and people as much as software.

This is where Pakistan should take a serious interest. Pakistan has a large population, a young workforce and an established IT and IT-enabled services sector. The next step is to move towards higher-value AI development, integration and specialised services. Open models could help the country make that transition without trying to reproduce the enormous costs of frontier AI development. Language is one obvious opportunity.

Urdu and Pakistan’s regional languages remain poorly served compared with English and several other major languages. A Pakistani AI ecosystem could adapt existing models to local languages and build tools for translation, document processing, education and public information.

Agriculture provides another practical use. AI systems could combine weather information, crop data, satellite imagery and local knowledge to provide farmers with timely advice. Such tools would not replace agricultural experts. They could extend their reach to communities that have limited access to them.

Healthcare and education also offer large potential gains. AI-assisted systems could help process medical records, support clinical workflows and expand access to basic information. In education, affordable AI tutors could provide personalised assistance to students while teachers could use the technology to prepare lessons and identify learning gaps.

The public sector should not be overlooked. Pakistan’s government generates enormous volumes of regulations, statistics, court documents, administrative records and public information. AI systems could make these materials easier to search and analyse. They could also reduce routine administrative work. Tax administration, for example, could use AI to identify anomalies and improve communication with taxpayers.

The economic case may be even stronger. Pakistan has struggled to raise productivity and expand exports fast enough to support sustained growth. AI offers a chance to sell higher-value digital services to international markets. Instead of competing mainly on labour costs, Pakistani firms could develop specialised solutions for finance, logistics, agriculture, education, manufacturing and other sectors. That requires investment.

Pakistan needs reliable electricity, better connectivity, cloud infrastructure, data centres and affordable access to computing. Universities need stronger links with industry. Engineering and computer-science programmes must give greater weight to machine learning, data engineering, AI systems and related fields.

This is an area where cooperation with China and BRICS countries could be useful. Pakistan could seek joint computing facilities, technical training, research partnerships and AI applications for local industries. It could also use BRICS platforms to secure access to infrastructure and expertise that would otherwise be expensive. Chinese technology can give Pakistan an alternative to systems dominated by Western companies. Data governance will be central to that effort.

Pakistan needs clear rules on where sensitive data is stored, who can access it and how AI systems can use it. Critical government and infrastructure data should receive particular protection. At the same time, regulation should not become so restrictive that it prevents researchers and businesses from building useful applications.

India has invested heavily in AI capacity while remaining attentive to questions of data security, strategic autonomy and technological dependence. Pakistan faces a similar policy challenge. This is also why AI governance matters.

For Pakistan, the test should be practical. Can a university train and fine-tune a model without prohibitive computing costs? Can a Pakistani company build an AI product for global customers? Can a student use an effective tutor, and a farmer receive useful information, in a local language? Can a government department process thousands of documents without exposing citizens’ private data?

Pakistan should engage with the BRICS initiative, but it should do so with a clear national strategy. It should seek access to models and computing, demand skills transfer, support local developers and establish rules that protect data without strangling innovation.

Most importantly, Pakistan should stop viewing AI simply as another imported technology. The strategic objective is to become a builder, adapter and exporter of AI solutions. China’s proposal may open the door. Pakistan’s task is to walk through it with its own engineers, its own companies, its own languages and its own priorities.

The writer is a Dawn staffer

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, September 28th, 2026