Artificial intelligence (AI) has already had a significant impact on business, human resources, and society as a whole in a number of ways. In terms of their development and implementation across human existence, AI technologies and their applications will continue to spread.
By 2032, it is anticipated that the size of the worldwide market for AI-related products would have increased from $454 billion to $2.58 trillion. The technology is profitable enough to be viewed as a sign of change and the development of economic value. As a result, nations all around the world are combining their knowledge and resources to take advantage of a variety of opportunities.
Pakistan will have a draft AI strategy in 2022, which is a relatively belated but admirable attempt to guide the nation toward progress while implementing AI. The policy aims to create a hybrid intelligence environment for the transparent, equitable, and ethical application of AI.
The development and responsibility agenda streams are used to create policy objectives. Regarding the use of AI in governance and the provision of public services, they remain silent.
The availability to data sets and sandboxes under the general heading of the transformation of the public sector through AI and related technologies is implied by Target 13. However, specifics are lacking. The policy’s “AI Enablement” pillar lists a number of efforts, including creating a “AI Fund,” a “CoE-AI,” and “AI Catalyzing Social Development.”
Has anything new come to light regarding how National Technology Fund Ignite used its funds for information and communications technology research and development?
The public sector development program, which is prone to funding reductions at any time, is the basis for the suggested funding system. As a result, the suggested funding method is unreliable. Perpetual funding advancement approaches are also ineffective.
We currently have four such centers, one each for AI, quantum, data, and cyber security, thus the creation of the CoE-AI is not necessary. We haven’t been able to use their capacity for research and innovation up until now. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel (as suggested in the draft policy), how about leveraging the capabilities that these centers can provide?
Our nation urgently needs to transform the social sector, and AI has the ability to assist us in addressing the problems with education, health, traffic congestion, city administration, agriculture, supply chains, and a host of other issues. AI also has a lot to contribute to help our dysfunctional governance.
The AI policy draft 2022 occasionally delves deeper into the areas of health and education and, occasionally, only briefly mentions agriculture and the value chain. Before setting a policy priority for the use of AI in these fields, we must first determine our unique demands at the federal and provincial levels across a variety of public utilities.
In order to create AI solutions and adopt the platforms and development styles that are currently available in connection to our needs in the social and economic sectors, we need a specialized workforce. The truth is that neither our industry nor university has the necessary capacity to prepare the necessary personnel.
Another gap is the technical expertise and knowledge needed by universities to prepare a skilled workforce. Pay and incentives varies significantly depending on whether the potential workforce chooses to work overseas or online vs finding employment with local businesses.
The government wants to handle this issue in what way? The draft’s policy alternatives are not clear, and it has not yet been determined if the suggested options will be financially viable.
The document also includes proposals for academic scholarships, up-skilling, and re-skilling programs. The policy’s suggested amounts for academic scholarships and the specifics of scholarship arrangements, however, need to be reviewed.
All AI utilities are built on a foundation of data and computing power. Our data is still very fragmented, which is still a fact (and is correctly noted in the AI draft strategy 2022). The fundamentals of data availability, security, sharing, and pooling, however, have not been accomplished.
It requires a lot of effort to consider adopting and implementing AI in the absence of big data governance, protection, and protocol implementation. The same is true of computational power. Our government is far from having the necessary e-governance infrastructure, and we lack the essentials for maintaining and promptly repairing personal computers.
How do we intend to develop computational agility in this environment, and how do we wish to obtain and employ this capacity for AI? These issues have not been fully covered by the draft policy.
Similarly, because our current infrastructure functions in silos, we are unable to defend our citizens from cyber-attacks that occasionally compromise their bank accounts. What will make it possible for us to use the data for different AI applications? We also need to determine the best course of action from a policy standpoint.
The proposed AI policy for 2022 ignores the sector of defense and security. This topic needs more thought and strategic attention given the rise of automated and unmanned warfare.
