Daily Times

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is considered one of the most powerful technological outcomes of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’. It is anticipated tomassively impactand shape the new world order in the near future. The advanced and modern economies like the US are already taking lead in AI. However, it will be pertinent to assess how developing economies like Pakistan might be affected by the transformations AI brings to the labour market, sustainable development and growth, access to information, climate change action, and governance.

The digital revolution has constantly made advances since the last few decades. It is being characterised by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digitaland biological spheres. Asthe fourth industrial revolution has evolvedat 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 is expected as the result of this digital revolution is still unfolding; however, several challenges have already been identified.

Economists like Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee have pointed out that the revolution could yield greater inequality, particularly in 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 that the displacement of workers by technology would, in aggregate, drastically increase in gainful and rewarding jobs. It is hard to foresee, and the final outcome might be a combination of the two.

According to the World Economic Forum 2019, talent, more than capital, would 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 that AI 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 evidentlyare lagging behind in harnessing this powerful technology.

Simultaneously, governments and world powers would 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 would 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 the right to privacy. It is essential, yet the tracking and sharing of information about people is a crucial part of the new connectivity. Debates about fundamental issues such as the impact on our private lives and loss of control over our data would intensify in future.

The revolutions occurring in biotechnology and AI, which are redefining what it means to be human by pushing back the current thresholds of life span, health, cognition, and capabilities, would compel us to reconfigure our moral and ethical boundaries as well.

In Pakistan, the impact of the digital revolution in terms of digital finance, telecommunications etc can be seen. 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 communication without the need for costly investments in landlines and other infrastructure. Mobile banking provided through cell phones has enabled access to financial services in remote areas that are without banking facilities.

The State of Bank of Pakistan predicted in 2019 that the market potential of digital finance services in Pakistan would cross US$36 billion by 2025, providing a seven percent boost to the GDP, creating four million new jobs and resulting in US$263 billion new deposits. 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 to improve their engagement with their clients. For instance, correlating usage patterns with other publicly available databases, service providers can send their consumers useful and targeted alerts for weather patterns, farm practicesand market prices, etc.

It is imperative that we safeguard our right to free expression, freedom of choice and privacy while we strive towards greater digital advancements and economic freedom

A Pakistani domiciled fintechCreditFix would 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 and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop innovative AI models for data collection.

Kenneth Cukier, senior editor at The Economist and NYT bestselling author of Big Data, providesa 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-interms 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 the 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.

Cukier further points 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-bethey 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-andwe are learning again today.”

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

We would also need to re-evaluate the value systems that might be altering due to new business practices. It is imperative that we 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 AI learns and changes on its own, multi-stakeholder collaboration is required to optimise accountability, transparency, privacy and impartiality to create the trust that accelerates the benefits and mitigate the risks of AI.

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