By Muhammad Shaban Rafi and Ayesha Junaid
As artificial intelligence enters lecture halls across Pakistan, universities grapple with preparing educators, and protecting students, in a rapidly changing educational landscape.
In universities from Kashmir to Karachi, a quiet revolution is underway. Artificial Intelligence (AI), once a distant concern for Silicon Valley, is now reshaping classrooms across Pakistan’s higher education sector. But as AI becomes embedded in teaching, learning, and assessment, a daunting realization is emerging: many educators are not prepared.
Across the country’s growing network of higher education institutions, a critical gap is widening, not in full access to AI technologies, but in the skills and ethical frameworks required to use them responsibly. UNESCO’s 2024 guidelines emphasize an urgent need: Pakistani educators must not only acquire AI literacy but also lead its responsible adoption in their syllabus.
AI literacy is emerging as a foundational competence for university teachers. A human-centered mindset is essential, an understanding that AI systems are human-made and carry the biases, values, and assumptions of their creators. Educators must critically assess AI’s impact on students’ autonomy, cultural diversity, and inclusion, especially given Pakistan’s multilingual and socioeconomically diverse student population.
Foundational knowledge of AI, including how data, algorithms, and machine learning models work, is no longer a specialist skill; it is becoming a basic teaching requirement. But beyond technical knowledge, educators must be trained to integrate AI thoughtfully into pedagogy: using tools like ChatGPT, Grammarly, Sudowrite etc., not just for convenience but to promote students’ engagement, critical thinking, and ethical reflection.
Ethical literacy is crucial in the Pakistani academic environment, where concerns over data privacy, academic integrity, and socio-economic disparities loom large. While AI platforms like ALEKS and Gradescope can optimize assessment and feedback, educators must be vigilant about how biases in these systems might affect students’ learning.
Educators’ training must emphasize responsible data use, respect for intellectual property, and the critical interrogation of AI-generated content, skills urgently needed in an academic culture grappling with issues like plagiarism and unequal access to technology.
The Higher Education Commission, Pakistan is beginning to explore AI’s implications, but experts say more urgent action is needed. The European Union’s risk-based regulatory model offers a useful lens: categorizing AI tools into minimal, limited, high, and unacceptable risks.
For instance, AI-powered proctoring systems that use facial recognition during online exams could violate student privacy rights and must be tightly regulated. Similarly, automated essay grading tools must be supervised to ensure they do not unfairly disadvantage students based on language, dialect, or writing style.
At the same time, low-risk tools such as AI-based scheduling assistants or language enhancement platforms like Grammarly can be more broadly deployed, provided students and teachers are educated to use them critically.
Although a few universities are making strides in the integration of AI within educational settings, many are still lagging in promoting ethical and effective AI practices in academia. We propose that these universities adopt a structured approach to AI integration through four critical phases.
At the first phase, Pakistani universities might want to declare a policy statement on their website regarding the ethical use of Generative AI, emphasizing the principle of human agency as endorsed by UNESCO.
At the second phase, Deans and Directors at these institutions may be requested to assume responsibility for developing an AI regulatory framework tailored to their respective departments and institutes. It is crucial to recognize that a single framework may not adequately address the diverse challenges and opportunities presented by AI across different faculties.
At the third phase, educators should proactively engage in their own learning to explore and implement AI tools effectively. They should be encouraged to integrate UNESCO’s AI competence framework into their course outline and research supervision. Additionally, they must enhance their pedagogical approaches to fully leverage the transformative potential of Generative AI.
At the fourth phase, students must be educated about the threats and benefits of Generative AI, focusing on how it can enhance their learning experiences. Educators should guide them in understanding, utilizing, and applying AI tools while maintaining an emphasis on human agency.
The readiness of Pakistani universities to adopt these recommendations, whether in a phased approach or through immediate implementation, is a critical factor for consideration. These recommendations are designed to modernize education, enhance digital competencies, and equip students for success in AI-driven global economies. Increasingly, employers are seeking graduates who demonstrate proficiency in AI tools to enhance productivity and performance in the workplace.
Will universities seize this moment to build a more inclusive, dynamic, and ethical academic future? Or will they risk letting technological adoption outpace the human capacities needed to guide it?
Muhammad Shaban Rafi is a Professor of English at Riphah International University, Lahore. He is a lead guest editor at Emerald and Springer publishing. Ayesha Junaid is an Assistant Professor of English at Forman Christian College (A Chartered University), Lahore.