The calculation of nuclear electromagnetic sum rules by directly diagonalizing the nuclear Hamiltonian in a large basis is numerically challenging and has not been performed for $A>2$ nuclei. With the significant progress of high performance computing, we show that calculating sum rules using numerous discretized continuum states obtained by directly diagonalizing the ab initio no-core shell model Hamiltonian is achievable numerically. Specifically, we calculate the $^{4}$He electric dipole ($E1$) polarizability, that is an inverse energy weighted sum rule, employing the Daejeon16 $NN$ interaction. We demonstrate that the calculations are numerically tractable as the dimension of the basis increases and are convergent. Our results for the $^{4}$He electric dipole polarizability are consistent with the most recent experimental data and are compared with those of other theoretical studies employing different techniques and various interactions.