Across Western corporate hubs, a not-so-subtle and profound crisis is unfolding at the bottom of the corporate ladder. From New York to London, artificial intelligence is rapidly automating the administrative, analytical, and data-entry tasks that traditionally served as the foundational training ground for young university graduates. As major multinational firms thin their junior ranks in the name of algorithmic efficiency utilizing advancements in AI, young professionals face a fundamental structural bottleneck: how do you gain your first five years of career experience when entry-level roles are rapidly disappearing?

In the Middle East, where over half the population is under 30, this global shift presents both an acute challenge and an extraordinary opportunity. For decades, regional economies relied heavily on bloated government payrolls to absorb emerging talent — a top-down model that fostered economic dependency, drained public coffers, and suffocated private innovation. Today, state budgets can no longer sustain that burden. It is private enterprise that must step up as the region’s employer of first resort — not by resisting technological progress, but by deploying AI to accelerate human capability and foster economic self-reliance.

My perspective on this transition comes from three decades of building private infrastructure under raw and post-conflict conditions. When I returned to the region after........

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