Daily Times

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being considered as one of the most powerful technological outcomes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It is anticipated to have massive impacts and shape the new world order shortly. The advanced and modern economies like the US are already taking a lead in AI. However, it will be pertinent to assess how developing economies, like Pakistan, might be affected by the transformations AI brings changes to the labour market, sustainable development and growth, access to information, climate change action, governance, etc.

The digital revolution has been advancing for the past few decades. It is being characterised by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres. As the Fourth Industrial Revolution has been evolving at an exponential pace, it is disrupting industries across the globe. The nature and scope of these changes herald the transformation of systems of production, communication, management and governance. While the future of work offers considerable opportunities for both advanced and developing economies, there are also significant challenges associated with the broader impact of technology on jobs, skills, wages and the nature of work itself. What one must be expecting as a result of this digital revolution is still unfolding. However, several challenges have also been identified.

Economists like Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee have pointed out that the revolution could yield greater inequality, particularly in the labour markets. As automation substitutes for labour across the entire economy, the net displacement of workers by machines might exacerbate the gap between returns to capital and labour. On the other hand, it is also possible the displacement of workers by technology will, in aggregate, drastically increase gainful and rewarding jobs. It is hard to foresee, and the outcome might be some combination of the two. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF, 2019) talent, more than capital, will represent the critical factor of production. This may give rise to a job market increasingly polarised into “low-skill/low-pay” and “high-skill/high-pay” segments, which, in turn, may have political and distributional consequences. On the contrary, it is also pertinent to note artificial intelligence holds the potential to substantially improve sustainable governance practices to meet the needs of citizens in innovative ways, ranging from traffic management, energy consumption and healthcare delivery to processing tax forms. But many public institutions across the world are lagging in harnessing this powerful technology.

It is tremendously crucial to underscore the valuable tools that can be developed through AI or big data technology to augment effective governance and participation

Simultaneously, governments and world powers will gain new technological powers to increase their control over populations, based on pervasive surveillance systems and the ability to control digital infrastructure. On the whole, however, governments will increasingly face pressure to change their existing approach to public engagement and policymaking, due to redistribution and decentralisation of power that new technologies make possible.

One of the greatest individual challenges posed by new information technologies is right to privacy. It is essential, but tracking and sharing information about people are a crucial part of the new connectivity. Debates about fundamental issues like the impact on our private lives and loss of control over our data will intensify in the future. Furthermore, the revolutions occurring in biotechnology and AI, which are redefining what it means to be human by pushing back the current thresholds of the life span, health, cognition and capabilities, will compel us to reconfigure our moral and ethical boundaries as well.

In Pakistan, we also witness the impact of the digital revolution in terms of digital finance, telecommunications, etc. Mobile phones are a clear example of the deep impact of new and emerging technologies. They have given poor people in developing countries access to long-distance communications without the need for costly investments in landlines and other infrastructure. Likewise, mobile banking provided through cell phones has enabled access to financial services in remote areas without banking facilities.

It is estimated (SBP 2019) that the market potential of Digital Finance services in Pakistan will cross USD 36 billion by 2025, providing a seven per cent boost to the GDP, creating four million new jobs and resulting in new deposits of USD 263 billion. This potential can only be achieved through a robust and efficient DFS ecosystem.

Big data techniques are highly appropriate for Pakistan’s context where large sets of available transaction data can be used to create risk profiles of unbanked individuals, families, and business enterprises. Data mining can also help service providers better engage with their clients. For instance, correlating usage patterns with other publicly available databases, service providers can send their consumers useful and targeted alerts (weather patterns, farm practices, market prices, etc.). A Pakistani domiciled fintech, “CreditFix,” will be using smartphone consumption pattern and publicly available data points to target low-income groups to help them with their businesses. Another Pakistani start-up, “Survey Auto,” founded by Dr Umar Saif has received an investment directly from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop innovative Artificial Intelligence models for data collection.

Kenneth Cukier, the senior editor at The Economist and NYT bestselling author of “Big Data,” provided some special insight regarding AI and its implication for developing countries like Pakistan. Firstly, regarding AI causing greater North-South digital inequality he said: “The existing divides between north and south will remain in terms of technology, economy, skills, healthcare and so on. Will these inequalities expand? No one knows for sure, but I don’t think so. This is because technology is becoming so inexpensive that developing countries will be able to access it and use it as well. Mobiles are almost as plentiful in Lahore as they are in London. So I’m an optimist that although inequalities will remain, they won’t grow. Hopefully, they will shrink. ”

Secondly, it is also tremendously crucial to underscore the valuable tools that can be developed through AI or big data technology to augment effective governance and participation, like liberal democratic values such as freedom of speech, right to information, e-governance and greater political participation, etc.

Kenneth Cukier further pointed out that “Technology, whether AI or anything else, is a function of human minds and values and put to use by us to achieve our ends–be they good or evil. It will require a culture and institutions to enable and protect “liberal” values like democracy, free expression, tolerance and so on. This culture and these institutions are hard to establish. And they are fragile, as the West learned in the 1930s and 1940s–and we are learning again today.”

It is important to start assessing the impact of AI and what it might entail for our economy and particularly the labour market in the coming years. Since rapid technological advancement is inevitable and its time we start adapting to new ways of discerning, problem solving and reskilling the talent pool.

We will also need to reevaluate the value systems that might be altering due to new business practices. We must safeguard our right to free expression, freedom of choice and privacy while we strive towards greater digital advancements and economic freedom. As rapid advances enlarge the scope and scale of AI’s deployment across all aspects of daily life, and as the technology can learn and change on its own, multi-stakeholder collaboration is required to optimise accountability, transparency, privacy and impartiality to create the trust that accelerates the benefits and mitigates the risks of AI.

The writer is a freelance writer and an Economic Analyst based in Lahore