Egypt debuts sovereign AI, but educators are split

Introducing Karnak and Sia: the country’s first large language model and a personalized AI tutor for high school students. As part of its push toward sovereign AI — the idea that a nation should develop its own AI tailored to its language, culture, and specific institutional know-how — the two projects were launched in early 2026 by the Communications and Information Technology Ministry.

The two are poised to become the country’s first real experiment with natively built AI systems — and education is set to be at the center of this experiment. With Karnak as the foundational infrastructure — trained on Egypt’s history, juridical framework, and cultural values — Sia is an AI tutor that teaches Arabic and history to high school students. Sia is also being rolled out as an assistant to help Egyptians navigate the legislative and regulatory environment and provide guidance to government services.

The case against AI tutoring

Egypt must proceed with extreme caution. We only need to look at Sweden, which is actively pulling screens out of early classrooms and reintroducing physical books to rescue falling literacy rates — after years of heavy digital integration. Even in Egypt, educators are quietly reverting to traditional methods to combat tech overreliance. “The way we evaluate students has gone back to how it was in the past: paper exams,” Engi Amin, social computing lecturer at Cairo University, tells EnterpriseAM.

We already saw the negative impact of digital-only learning during the Covid-19 pandemic pilot experiment. “Even though Covid was only about two years or so, online learning had a significant effect and proved that when something lacks the human experience, or is entirely online, it effectively fails,” Amin explains.

The risks of degrading cognitive power are notable. Putting computers on K-12 desks “may turn out to be among the costliest mistakes in the history of education,” Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University and a prominent critic of screen time, recently warned.

More alarmingly, unchecked AI access destroys the fundamental will to learn. A recent Cairo University study revealed that university students are actively losing critical thinking skills due to automated shortcuts. Amin observes this firsthand, telling us that “students don’t have the incentive to learn anything anymore” and constantly ask themselves “why should I spend time and effort on something that AI is going to do better than me anyway?”

Teachers also may lose the will to teach. “If students prefer AI, it will surpass the teacher’s skills,” Amin notes. “Consequently, teachers will find they have no incentive to explain or to find new ways to teach students.”

Poor public infrastructure is not helping either. “Between hallucinations, infrastructure problems, and connection issues where it keeps dropping, a lot can go wrong,” Amin warns.

The case for AI tutoring

Despite the risks, AI offers an unprecedented window for the “democratization of education” by creating equal learning prospects across all governorates and economic levels. “The concept of AI tutoring — having a tutor that can explain things in your own language and in a way that suits your specific skills — is fantastic,” Amin explains.

AI is a genuine and highly useful teaching tool, which can make learning easier and more accessible, edtech startup Nagwa CEO Ahmed Hindawi tells us. “AI never gets tired. It can provide infinite examples to illustrate a concept until a student truly ‘gets it,’ adapting to the student’s specific rate of progress to build their confidence.” AI provides “a safe space” where students can be honest about what they don’t understand without the embarrassment of peer judgment.

“While AI cannot (and should not) fully replace human teachers, the reality is that we face a global shortage of educators,” Hindawi notes. AI can help directly address this global shortage by handling repetitive explanations, which empowers both the student and the teacher to focus on actual learning.

AI can also save us bns of EGP spent on expensive private tutoring. “While AI has its own operational costs, it is significantly more affordable and scalable than human tutoring,” Hindawi explains. It also serves as a powerful assistant for teachers to create question banks or structure lecture notes, Amin argues.

The solution?

The technology is simply too important to ignore, but it cannot be left to be completely autonomous. To succeed, Egypt must focus on gradual application. “We shouldn’t just drop it in all at once and leave people to [figure it out]; everything must happen gradually,” Amin advises. Simultaneously, the state must expand internet bandwidth to ensure equitable access across every governorate, Hindawi notes.

Educators have no choice but to adapt. Educators are still stumbling through trial and error, but strict limits must be set “so we shouldn’t reach a point where it overtakes us, forcing us to start all over again,” Amin concludes.