Industrial sectors should prepare for challenges of emerging technologies: President Alvi

ISLAMABAD: President Dr. Arif Alvi has said that emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics and internet of things (IoTs) are poised to unleash the next wave of digital disruption and industrial sectors should prepare for it, ARY News reported.

Chairing a meeting of the task force on emerging technologies at Aiwan-e-Sadr, President Alvi said that next decade in Pakistan would be the decade of ICT revolution based on a futuristic telecom infrastructure, for which Pakistan must have necessary ingredients as the infrastructure, a great number of educated youth in IT & Telecom and a population willing to adapt to new technologies.

In a statement, he emphasized that digitization of government, including digital identification machines and voting technology, holds special significance.

Furthermore, cyber tools and apps must also be incorporated in education, health and population planning, biotechnology, security, he said.

President Alvi said that dynamically evolving information and communication technologies (ICTs) were playing a key role towards digital transformation and had crossed sectoral significance in terms of fourth industrial revolution.

The president highlighted that digitally-enabled transformation had many components, one of which was to continue to invest in the development of important key digital enablers like digital identity, shared data services, shared business processes, technology centres and provide incentives for their use across the public sector.

Therefore, building an innovation ecosystem was also an essential ingredient, he added.

The president pointed out that the government was already making efforts to enhance the environment of innovation through different start-ups in emerging technologies.

He also highlighted that we saw very significant role of technology companies in building Pakistan’s digital economy. There were many low hanging fruits and with a collective effort we could yield quick and long lasting results, the president added.

Emerging Technologies are penetrating all sectors of modern life. Investment in artificial intelligence (AI) is increasing and it is estimated that tech giants spent $20-$30 billion on AI in 2016, with 90 % of this spent on R&D and deployment, and 10 % on Al acquisitions.