Pakistan, Feb. 10 -- On Monday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif unveiled a futuristic vision, announcing the government's plan to invest $1 billion in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030, with AI curricula in every school (even in far-flung Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and Balochistan) and 1,000 PhD scholarships and training for one million professionals.

It sounds transformative, yet the ground reality is starkly different.

Currently, only about 45% of the population has access to the internet, and literacy rates hover around a troubling 60%. The government's education budget has dwindled to less than 1% of GDP, raising serious concerns about the feasibility of such ambitious AI initiatives. With approximately 25.1 million c...