A Meta delegation which was led by Sarim Aziz, Director of South and Central Asia Public Policy, today met with Shaza Fatima Khawaja, Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication of Pakistan. The subjects that were discussed included expanding interaction in public sector innovation and capacity-building, researching the role of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as promoting digitalization in Pakistan.
Pointing out that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif arranges a weekly review meeting on the transition of Pakistan to a cashless economy, the Minister stressed about the strong commitment of the Government to a Digital Pakistan.
She reaffirmed that the Prime Minister’s vision of Digital Nation Pakistan, in which emerging technologies are essential to government, service delivery, and economic development, places a strong emphasis on creating a society that is empowered by technology.
An update was provided to the Minister by team of Meta on the company’s most recent advancements in artificial intelligence, which included the LLaMA open-source models, generative AI applications for the public sector, along with developments in local language models, such as Urdu.
In order to support developing digital ecosystem of Pakistan, both Meta and Shaza Fatima Khawaja, Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication showed great interest in cooperative training programs, particularly for educators, and decided to look into further collaboration in the areas of AI adoption, digital skilling, and innovation collaborations.