Reflections from Seoul on the Future of Inclusive AI
Ali Dar
My recent engagements with the global AI community, most recently in Seoul, South Korea, have left me reflecting on a fundamental question: as artificial intelligence advances at extraordinary speed, are we making it accessible to the people who stand to benefit from it most?
At the Global AI & Digital Summit, hosted by the World Bank Group alongside the Government of the Republic of Korea, I had the opportunity to engage with policymakers, technology leaders and development partners on the future of AI and its potential to transform economies, governments and public services.
South Korea offers important lessons for countries like Pakistan. Its transformation into a global technology leader demonstrates what sustained investment in digital infrastructure, human capital and innovation can achieve. But beyond the technological advances, my biggest takeaway from Seoul was the importance of ensuring that this new wave of innovation reaches everyone, including those who have historically been left behind.
Artificial intelligence may be the most transformative technology of our generation. But for billions of people, there is still a fundamental barrier between its promise and its usefulness: AI does not yet adequately understand the languages they speak.
Think about a farmer in Punjab asking for agricultural advice in Punjabi. A mother describing her child’s symptoms in her local dialect. Or a student trying to learn a difficult concept in the language spoken at home.
If AI cannot understand their words, accents and local context accurately, how inclusive is it really?
The world is beginning to ask the right questions This question is increasingly central to global conversations about the future of AI.
At the United Nations General Assembly, governments adopted the Global Digital Compact, calling for digital technologies and AI systems that protect linguistic and cultural diversity and reach people currently excluded from the digital economy.
In September, a global coalition of 60 organisations announced an ambitious five-year goal: to enable an estimated 3.4 billion people who speak languages underrepresented in today’s AI systems to use AI in their own language and voice.
The message emerging from these global conversations is clear: AI cannot be considered successful if its benefits remain concentrated among those who already have access to technology, education and opportunity. The next frontier of AI is not just making it more intelligent. It is making that intelligence accessible to everyone.
Language is the missing infrastructure of AI We spend enormous amounts of time discussing computing power, advanced models, data centres and investment. All are important. But we often overlook something equally fundamental: language.
Estimates suggest that more than 90% of the data used to train early large language models came from English-language sources. This matters because language is not simply a collection of words that can be translated. It carries culture, context, local knowledge and the way people understand and describe their world.
An AI system may speak grammatically correct Urdu or Punjabi and still misunderstand a health question, a local agricultural problem or a regional expression.
Translation is not the same as understanding. And accessibility is not the same as inclusion.
Making AI truly multilingual requires more than adding languages to a platform. It requires local language datasets, models tested against regional dialects, and the involvement of researchers, linguists and communities who understand the people these systems are meant to serve.
It also requires accuracy, privacy and accountability. Especially in healthcare, education and public services, a fluent but inaccurate answer can do more harm than good.
What this means for Punjab
Under the leadership of Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif, our ambition is to make Punjab the most AI-enabled province in South Asia by 2029.
But our success cannot be measured simply by the number of AI applications we launch or the sophistication of the technologies we adopt.
It must be measured by how many lives we improve. For a province of more than 130 million people, language is central to that ambition. At the Office of AI Punjab, we are already putting this thinking into practice.
— To be continued
