How Artificial Intelligence may Affect Sri Lanka.
1. What is AI?
AI or artificial intelligence is the term that is used to describe the process of inducing machines with the ability to mimic human behaviour, thinking patterns, learning capabilities and other cognitive functions. In the year of 2019, we have come up a long way in the avenue of artificial intelligence. So far that, some machine based processes which were introduced as AI is disregarded as AI by now. These process have become so easy to achieve that it doesn’t fall into the sophisticated scope of AI anymore. For an example, optical character recognition which was a big deal back in the history of AI, is now simply a specialized machine learning based process.
2. AI and Sri Lanka
The first problem a government that is trying to standardize AI related policies to set up an AI oriented work flow in the country is the misconception where the introduction of AI will destroy the human labor jobs. There are extensive researches that show how AI may displace jobs but could also create jobs more than it displaces. [1] These researches are based on USA and UK predominantly. Even though this is true for those countries, it might not be true for Sri Lanka. Thus, the first and foremost step towards AI related policies is to make sure the job trade off will not be an issue. The government will have to do their own research within Sri Lanka and provide a positive answer. If the research outcome seems to be negative still, I think the best approach to change the odds is for the government to invest more in ICT based education, more study paths towards automation, machine learning, Cyber security and data science, engineering, logic and mathematics. These are streams that are combined with AI and the personnel pursuing such avenues will surely have jobs in a country with AI established.
When the above mentioned issue is kept aside, AI could really help our systems increase productivity, efficiency and actually try and gain a profit for a difference. Professional, technical and scientific services will surely get ahead in gaining higher income while providing customer satisfaction. Transport, power grids and public administration sections which are usually pin pointed at, when we Sri Lankans talk about inefficiency and minimal productivity will actually be of use when automated AI is introduced. One of the crucial policies to be introduced when trying to establish AI in Sri Lanka is to have a strong committee overseeing the transition so that AI induction will not die in the middle of the process simply due to bad mouthing of few people who do not believe in technology and fear the change.
3. AI and the People
Most of us do not know the privacy rights, information security based right we have. AI is already in use right in front of our eyes even though most Sri Lankans doesn’t know. For an example, Facebook, Instagram, twitter and most other social media platforms we work with in our day today life, uses AI to capture the user behaviour, analyse and predict our wants and needs, even to guess what we will think of having for a meal. The information gathering happens automatically. Our personal photos are being used for person recognition and to track where we go. All these happen due to an “I agree” button we have clicked when signing up to these platforms. But I doubt that, people from outside the ICT industry knows about these stakes. Thus, the government should start advocating the people of the country and educate them of how they may lose their personal privacy from these AI based behaviour analysis and how to use them for our own advantage and ease.
We are a nation who has suffered war for a long time. But not most of us know about cyber warfare. AI can come as a module integrated into a malware that can carry out an autonomous process in crippling network grids and power grids. Even huge countries such as US, Germany and China have suffered such. Thus, we should have policies and controlling methodologies to mitigate any threat that may take place. The new Cyber bill would be a great place to integrate AI based policies too.
AI will be an asset to many business sectors along with the military. The firing systems, autonomous missile guiding systems are few examples. Thus, there should be standards in how scientific and technological development should be enhanced using AI based technology. Simply a precaution that should be a must to keep the human nature of destruction under control.
When speaking from the view of a large scale organization, AI will release them of paying salaries each month. One time investment on an AI based system may be able to do each process type work around the companies. Thus the gross profit will increase substantially while the security and responsibility towards employees can be left aside. But, the trade-off would be having to invest in information and cyber security. AI is a digital system, which will be connected to the World Wide Web. This has its own set of disadvantages such as malware, sabotage, cyber-attacks etc. herring personnel to carry out threat assessment, penetration testing would be required. If such large scale organizations get affected by cyber criminals, hacktivists or any kind of cyber-attacks, Sri Lankan business culture will collapse. Thus we need cyber security standards and benchmarks such as ISO 27000 and CIS all around the country. These should be legal requirements before any organization sticks their hands into AI technology.
AI does have the potential to be exactly what it is depicted in movies. If we are trying to make a machine mimic human behaviour, we should not forget that being evil, angry, hatred, violence are only a few of negative behaviour patterns in the human nature. If a machine can learn to mimic the positive aspects of a human, it obviously can grab a few of those negative aspects. Thus, if the country is trying to carry out AI based research and development, it is of our best interest to have policies for responsible methodologies in tracking, overlooking and documenting any new findings and developments, researchers may come across. Sri Lanka has brilliant minds and they are capable of achieving miracles if they have the right input and contribution. Such methodologies such as tracking, overlooking and documenting will only be necessary only if these brilliant minds receive the required support from the government. If not, they will simply migrate to a country that appreciates them and invent ground breaking AI based discoveries for another country.
4. Conclusion
As a country, as a government, Sri Lanka has a lot to learn on the cutting edge technologies such as Artificial Intelligence. But, being ready for the AI based worst case scenario is a good move.
We should start with educating the country of what AI is. We should stop the people who badmouths new technology and get rid of the people who fears change. Sri Lanka is moving forward but extremely slowly due to these type of people who have managed to get to the head chairs in Sri Lankan administration. Then we should see how we can establish a national defense strategy. Not against the physical enemies, but against the digital ones that will rise the head along with the induction of AI. Autonomous weapons, enhanced military robots, AI based bombing are some digital threats that can do physical harm. Policies for these should certainly be there. Organizations should be legally required to measure and evaluate AI tech via standards and best conduct benchmarks. Educating personnel in conducting cyber security based testing should happen parallel. Data sets are a huge requirement when it comes to training AI based models. Thus, every country should contribute in managing a shared environment to pool in data and use for AI based optimization. Trying to induce AI technology to a country will not work if the government cannot convince their people that the jobs that will be revoked due to this same technology will provide more jobs than they lost. To make that a reality, the country should have more tech savvy personnel because the new jobs will be in a technology related sector. Thus, one of the main concerns on the policy creation should involve encouragement for new study streams and standardized private institutions than letting the ignorant and fearful personnel protest against them. Because sooner or later, AI will be what everyone talks about, all around the globe. It would be the discovery that changes civilizations and even speed up our evolution rates. Thus, this is the best time to involve the new cyber security act along with a policy and strategic plan creation for AI technology for Sri Lanka.
5. References
[1] Anmar Frangoul, “Artificial intelligence will create more jobs than it destroys? That’s what PwC says”, CNBC research, Published Tue, Jul 17 2018.
[2] Artificial Intelligence for the American People, White House facts, Key strategic documents.
[3] Roman Yampolskiy, Associate Professor of CECS at the University of Louisville, “A Principled AI Discussion”, January 17, 2017.
