The first danger is that artificial intelligence turns into a pretext for rapid replacement, where expertise built over decades is discarded under the pretext that it "does not keep pace." The second danger — and its exact opposite — is that a new generation possessing the tools of the era is excluded under the pretext that they are "inexperienced." Both dangers strip the state of its most important strategic asset: its human capital, which not only built Jordan but also contributed to the renaissance of many countries around us.
The truth that is often overlooked: artificial intelligence — up to this moment — is a tool within the planning sphere rather than an executive reality. It cannot be utilized without proper execution, and proper execution can only be created by those who know the terrain of the field, its institutions, and its laws. Without this, plans remain in drawers, or their implementation stumbles midway. Technology does not substitute for institutional judgment; it multiplies it if present, and multiplies chaos if absent.
What is required is strategic thinking that allows the entry of new competencies smoothly, without a vacuum or stumbling in the transition. I propose five axes:
The first axis: Shifting the weight from producing plans to engineering execution. Institutions should be measured by what has been executed, not what has been announced, and every major plan should have a clear executive owner, a timeline, and impact indicators rather than activity indicators.
The second axis: Dual teams. Working groups in every entity that bring together experienced individuals with young competencies, not as formal committees but as teams responsible for specific outcomes; experience reads risks and opens doors, while the new generation reads the tools and accelerates the rhythm.
The third axis: Scheduled gradual withdrawal. The departure of experienced personnel — due to reaching retirement age or other circumstances — should be pre-planned rather than sudden, with a period of temporal overlap between predecessors and successors where responsibility is transferred in stages, not by a decision in a single day.
The fourth axis: Preserving institutional memory. Documenting unwritten knowledge — that which an official carries in their head rather than in their files — and establishing a national expertise bank that keeps retirees in a consulting and training position, for experience that walks out the door without documentation is an irreplaceable loss through recruitment.
The fifth axis: Mutual qualification. Empowering the experienced with modern tools through serious rather than symbolic programs, and empowering the youth to understand the state, its institutions, and its complexities. Keeping pace is the responsibility of both parties, and learning is a two-way street.
Trading off experience against technology is a fundamentally flawed trade-off. Experience without the tools of the era is slow, and tools without experience are blind. The state that knows how to blend the two is the only one that will cross this stage without paying a heavy price from its institutional memory.
Jordan possesses experience and possesses youth. What it lacks is neither of the two, but the engineering that brings them together in one room.
