The government of Pakistan is taking steps to lower the barriers for its entrepreneurs to build AI-native applications, allowing them to operate without relying on Western cloud megaservice providers.
Importance: If successful, this initiative could serve as a model for other emerging economies looking to kickstart AI growth while keeping sensitive data stored within national networks, protecting it from foreign hostile forces.
News Highlights: The Digital Management Authority of Pakistan signed a memorandum of understanding on Monday with the DFINITY Foundation, based in Switzerland.
This move will enable DFINITY's Caffeine (an AI platform that allows people to build software applications using natural language prompts, significantly reducing the need for traditional coding expertise) to be used by Pakistan's large and growing community of entrepreneurs.
From a macro perspective: This collaboration also reflects broader efforts by governments to establish a certain degree of data sovereignty.
Many countries still heavily rely on technology suppliers from the United States and China, which have the scale and resources to handle the vast amounts of data flowing across their networks.
Pakistan hopes to leverage DFINITY's technology to provide entrepreneurs and government agencies with a way to build applications that do not rely on centralized cloud providers to store and route data.
Implicitly: To achieve collaboration, Pakistan is building its own subnet - a dedicated, country-specific part of DFINITY's Internet Computer network - rather than relying on services like Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud.
Conversely, the Internet Computer is a blockchain-based distributed cloud system where applications run on multiple independent servers rather than within a single centralized data center.
Dominic Williams, founder and chief scientist of the DFINITY Foundation, stated in an exclusive interview with Axios that this decentralized design makes it more difficult for attackers or foreign governments to tamper with data or quietly alter applications, as no single provider controls the entire system.
Threat level: Williams warns that AI-supported attacks will increase the risk of large-scale failures in centralized cloud environments, as a single breach or disruption could affect multiple services.
Subnets built on the Internet Computer Protocol aim to enhance resilience by replicating the same data across servers located in multiple different places, rather than relying on a single central storage point.
Interestingly, Pakistan is a thriving startup hub, with 95% of businesses employing fewer than 10 people according to the 2023 census.
Next: According to the press release, the Pakistan Digital Management Authority plans to use this collaboration to develop a nationwide instant messaging application to enable private and verifiable communication.
DFINITY will also provide hardware to help Pakistan establish the subnet and offer 1000 Caffeine licenses aimed at supporting application development in government, education, and entrepreneurship.
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