Muhammad Burhan Mirza on the AI Shift Already Transforming Pakistani Workplaces

In practice, an employee does not need permission from their firm to open ChatGPT and ask it to draft an email, summarise a report, analyse data or assist write code.

Key points

• In a 2023 interview with Business Recorder, Mirza remarked AI and big-data adoption in Pakistan was still at an extremely early stage.
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• Mirza's argument from 2023 was essentially that technology adoption requires infrastructure, skills and a framework around it.
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• Muhammad Burhan Mirza, a Pakistani entrepreneur and investor who has worked with technology firms and startups, was already raising some of these questions a number of years ago.

That is part of what makes AI different from plenty of previous workplace tech: it can enter an organisation through an individual employee before management has decided how it should be employed. That is increasingly the reality in Pakistan.

While businesses are exploring AI to improve efficiency and reduce costs, graduates and service-sector workers are already using generative AI tools. According to A recent Dawn analysis, pakistan remains at an early stage of digitisation, with widespread apply of tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini but limited understanding of their broader implications. The difficulty is that adoption and preparation are not the same thing.

For context, a firm may have employees using AI every day without having a policy explaining what information can be entered into an AI platform. It tools are approved, how AI-generated work should be checked or who is responsible when an AI-assisted decision goes wrong.

In a 2023 interview with Business Recorder, Mirza remarked AI and big-data adoption in Pakistan was still at an extremely early stage. He pointed to a lack of data infrastructure, skilled professionals and regulatory frameworks as barriers to wider business adoption. He additionally argued that businesses needed to train existing and new workers before they could effectively implement AI systems.

Three years afterwards, the technology has moved considerably faster than numerous of those organisational systems. AI is now being applied for relatively simple tasks; drafting content, preparing presentations, generating marketing material and summarising documents; as well as more technical applications involving software development, customer management, analytics and automation.

Mirza's earlier argument therefore takes on a different significance. The question is no longer whether Pakistani businesses will encounter AI. They already have. The question is whether they know what to do with it.

There is additionally a growing distinction between having access to AI and actually having AI skills.

Someone who knows how to generate a paragraph with ChatGPT is not necessarily equipped to evaluate its accuracy, protect confidential information or integrate the technology into a business process. That gap becomes more significant as AI moves from experimentation into everyday work.

This is an area where Mirza's focus on workforce development intersects with the broader AI debate. Through Skills360, which he co-founded, and The Coach360, Mirza has been involved in skills development and training initiatives. More lately, his public activity has included AI workshops covering practical applications such as prompting and AI-assisted content creation. The risks, meanwhile, are not theoretical.

For context, an employee can unknowingly upload sensitive business information into an external AI service. An AI-generated report can contain convincing but incorrect information. A firm can commence relying on automated recommendations without establishing who remains accountable for the final decision. There is additionally the question of jobs.

Meanwhile, the immediate effect of AI in plenty of Pakistani workplaces may not be wholesale replacement of employees. It may be a gradual change in what employees are projected to accomplish in the same amount of time. A worker who can employ AI effectively may produce more than one who cannot, creating pressure for organisations to rethink training, recruitment and performance expectations.

Pakistan's administration is already setting ambitious targets around AI. While the administration has confirmed a $1 billion investment in the country's AI ecosystem and a programme to train one million non-IT professionals in AI skills, the National AI Policy 2025 includes a target of training one million AI professionals by 2030. But national ambition does not automatically translate into workplace readiness.

For Pakistani firms, the first step may be less complicated than building sophisticated AI systems. When human review is mandatory and which tasks should never be delegated entirely to an AI system, they need basic rules: what employees can employ, what data they can share.

Mirza's argument from 2023 was essentially that technology adoption requires infrastructure, skills and a framework around it. Pakistan now has considerably more reason to take that argument seriously.

AI is already entering Pakistani workplaces. It is arriving through employees, freelancers, startups and businesses experimenting with whatever tools are available. The policy question has moved beyond whether Pakistan should adopt AI. It is whether its organisations can catch up with the individuals already using it. Stay Connected with ProPakistani.

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Taken together, the developments around muhammad Burhan Mirza on the AI Shift Already Transforming Pakistani Workplaces point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.