People must see themselves in the AI revolution

President Donald Trump’s historic visit to Saudi Arabia was not merely another high-profile diplomatic stop. It was a signal, one that reverberates far beyond ceremonial pageantry or economic accords. With a sweeping agenda anchored in regional security and technological advancement, the visit marked a profound turning point: the introduction of artificial intelligence as a centerpiece in reimagining international alliances and national futures. 

As Saudi Arabia deepens its strategic commitment to AI, the spotlight now turns to a less discussed — yet far more consequential — question: Who truly owns the AI revolution?

For too long, the narrative has belonged to technologists. From Silicon Valley labs to national AI strategies, the story of AI has been told in the language of algorithms, architectures, and compute. And while the technical infrastructure is essential, we argue that such a narrow view of AI is not only incomplete, it is dangerous.

When the American Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Quantum was launched in the US in 2016, the institutional landscape for AI was highly specialized. Data scientists, computer engineers, and mathematicians dominated the discourse. Policymakers and business leaders, overwhelmed by complexity, often stood at a distance. AI was regarded as something technical — a toolset, a model, an optimization system.

The same pattern is now emerging in Saudi Arabia and across the Gulf. Government agencies are in search of use cases. Consultants are offering solutions in search of problems. Infrastructure projects are underway to create sovereign large language models and national AI platforms. In these efforts, AI is often reduced to a software engineering challenge — or worse, a procurement exercise.

But this lens fails to capture the essence of the revolution underway. What’s at stake is not simply how nations compute. It’s how they think, organize, and act in a new age of machine cognition.

We’ve long argued that AI cannot — and must not — be the exclusive domain of technologists. A true revolution occurs only when the masses engage. Just as the internet went mainstream not through protocols and standards, but through wide-scale adoption and imaginative use, AI must be demystified and integrated into the fabric of society.

It is neither feasible nor necessary to turn an entire nation into data scientists. We need a nation of informed leaders, innovators, teachers, managers, and citizens who can speak the language of AI, not in code, but in context.

This conviction led AIAIQ to become the world’s first applied AI institute focused not on producing more PhDs, but on educating professionals across sectors — from finance and healthcare to logistics and public service. Our mission was clear: to build a movement of AI adoption engineering, centered on human understanding, social responsibility, and economic impact.

History has shown that every technological revolution requires more than invention. It requires meaning. When the automobile first arrived in America, it was met with skepticism. Roads were unprepared. Public opinion was divided. Without storytelling, explanation, and cultural adaptation, the car might have remained a niche novelty.

AI is no different, but the stakes are higher. Unlike past revolutions, AI directly threatens to reshape or eliminate jobs across virtually all sectors. It raises moral questions about decision-making, power, privacy, and the nature of intelligence itself. Without a serious effort to prepare populations, the result will be confusion, fear, and backlash.

Adoption is not just about teaching Python or TensorFlow. It is about building cognitive readiness in society — a collective ability to make sense of AI as a force that operates both with us and around us.

What’s at stake is not simply how nations compute. It’s how they think, organize, and act in a new age of machine cognition.

Ali Naqvi and Mohammed Al-Qarni

AIAIQ’s work in the US, and now in the Kingdom, reflects this ethos. We don’t approach AI as a product to be sold. We approach it as a paradigm to be understood, negotiated, and lived.

Over nearly a decade of pioneering applied AI education, we’ve identified four essential elements for ensuring that technological revolutions — especially this one — take root meaningfully within society.

People need help interpreting what AI actually is and how it is changing their world. It’s not just a black box; it’s a new kind of collaborator, a new model of thought.

Technologies cannot remain in labs or behind firewalls. They must be translated into the language and workflow of everyday people. Mass understanding is more vital than mass compute.

Every revolution carries moral implications. If not carefully navigated, AI can create a deep dissonance between traditional societal values and new forms of digital governance.

Above all, people must see themselves in the revolution. They must feel empowered to participate, to lead, and to shape what comes next.

Much has been made of “sovereign AI” — the ambition of nations to build homegrown LLMs and nationalized data infrastructure. Several Gulf nations are investing heavily in this vision. And yet, we caution: True sovereignty is not measured by the size of your datacenter, but by the sophistication of your human capital.

You can localize your AI stack, but unless you cultivate a generation of researchers, engineers, business innovators, and public thinkers, your systems will be technologically impressive but strategically hollow. Sovereignty is about stewardship. That requires education, experimentation, and the freedom to adapt.

As Saudi Arabia targets massive economic transformation, the challenge is not just to build smart systems, but to build a smart society that knows what to do with them.

President Trump’s visit, and the unprecedented alignment between American and Saudi priorities around AI, is not just symbolic. It marks a deeper shift in how global partnerships are defined. Oil once defined alliances. Now, intelligence — both human and machine — will.

For the first time, nations are collaborating not to dominate territory, but to co-develop cognition. The tools may be digital, but the outcome will be profoundly human.

The alignment between global and local initiatives in Saudi Arabia represents a shared belief that the future is not only coded in silicon but shaped in classrooms, boardrooms, war rooms, and living rooms.

The AI revolution is coming. But it must belong to the people. Otherwise, it will never become a revolution.

• Mohammed Al-Qarni is a leading voice in AI policy and governance in the Gulf and Ali Naqvi is the founder of the American Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Quantum.