Pakistan drives AI growth through factory data startup and UN Women school

World Context, a Pakistani startup founded in 2025, is recording factory workers with sensors, gloves and head‑mounted cameras to create real‑world training datasets for AI‑powered robots. The company says it is gathering data from about 8,000 workers across textile, automotive and logistics sectors, and sells the datasets to robotics firms in the United States and China. CEO Sherdil Ali Khan says Pakistan’s large, skilled manual‑labour force gives it a competitive edge in providing the expertise that robots need to learn.

In parallel, Pakistan launched the UN Women Gender‑Responsive AI School, the first UN Women AI school in South Asia. Led by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication with support from KOICA, the programme offers training on AI basics, ethical and gender‑responsive AI, governance and inclusive development to policymakers, parliamentarians, civil‑society groups and the private sector. More than 5,000 participants across Asia and the Pacific have already been trained, and the school aims to increase women’s participation in the country’s growing digital economy.