THE opposing arguments that surround Artificial Intelligence and its role in development remind me of early arguments against social media. Unfortunately, I think there is a lot of misinformation surrounding artificial intelligence (better known as AI). In recent times, AI has been transforming the global arena in every way possible. Computer systems can be designed to perform the tasks human intelligence can perform. That development is known as Artificial Intelligence. The performance of AI can span from reasoning, solving problems, understanding natural language and even recognising patterns. In fact, Google describes AI as the backbone of innovation in modern computing. AI is quite a broad field as well and includes various disciplines such as psychology, science, software engineering, and philosophy—just to name a few. Reactive, theory-of-mind, limited memory and self-awareness are the four common types of AI.

For the purpose of this week’s column piece, I do not want to fully focus on how AI is developed and why. The internet has many existing articles on those topics. Instead, I want to address the social implications and the arising arguments that surround these computer developments—especially as they relate to Guyana and our future developments. I started to hear the arguments about how detrimental AI can be after the COVID-19 pandemic. Many students at universities, including Guyanese students, use AI software to write essays and answer test questions. Artificial Intelligence also seemingly made “perfect” factory robots. There is a large margin of job displacement since the expansion of AI technologies. These computer developments meant companies could utilise the technology instead of paying workers to complete certain tasks. Artificial Intelligence also seems to take away the authenticity of thoughts and creativity.

Many people are also concerned about security and cyber attacks. Similar to any computer system, it is still vulnerable to cyber-attacks, and if that happens, misinformation or threats can spread rapidly. In essence, it can be used as a weapon instead of a tool of development. These concerns are valid, and I completely understand them all. I, too, was skeptical about the use of AI in development. Nonetheless, I educated myself on its uses and implications, and it helped me draw my own conclusions. I want you all to also debunk the existing misinformation about AI and understand that we were once collectively skeptical about learning and adjusting to the use of social media as well. In fact, I remember my older family members once being skeptical about the use of cell phones, but with the awareness and consistent education about cellphone use—they drew their own conclusions as well. Today, many of them have a greater appreciation for cell phones. Simply put, we have to understand the advantages and disadvantages for ourselves to fully make a concise decision on how to use a particular technological development.

Guyana is still a developing country, and like many others, we can utilise AI to fast-track our progress. AI can be used in agriculture to help our farmers manage waste or monitor weather conditions in the agricultural sector. AI can be used right at our airports to help passengers check-in faster, and this will help boost our tourism industry. AI can be used to monitor social services and welfare programmes to ensure that faster service delivery is provided, which will help improve our safety net programmes. The use of AI can be used in schools to help students better understand concepts and diversify teaching methods. It can be used in a vast amount of areas to our advantage. However, it is up to us to understand what those advantages are and what the boundaries should be.

The threats of AI, as with any technological advances, should be highly monitored. I believe this is why social media platforms such as Facebook now alert their users of AI-created content so people can be aware of what authentic human-created content is and what is not. This allows for boundaries to be established and also gives the users a choice as to what they want to consume—AI-created or not. As such, if Guyana uses AI technology for snowball development, it should be similarly monitored. The implementations should also be planned ahead of time to ensure that it is the right course of action to develop and use. I believe if we’re to utilise AI effectively, we should also help resolve the challenges it creates simultaneously.

Social impacts such as job disparities, ethical considerations, plagiarism and privacy violations should be addressed at all levels as we utilise this new development of technology. It will take a collective effort to maximise the use of Artificial Intelligence while monitoring its risks, but I believe with much planning, consideration and awareness—Guyana can utilise these rapid technological developments to improve our existing sectors and even create new ones in the process.