In this video playlist participants explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping public sector problem solving, and why harnessing its potential responsibly with rules and regulations is essential to create societies which trust AI. Participants discuss real-world applications of AI in healthcare, education and climate resilience, and emphasise the benefits of utilising this transformational technology. The critical need for lessons learned from AI to be shared is examined, with participants stating that AI should be used as a tool to aid outcomes, not a final answer. Participants emphasise that governments should not start by asking how to deploy AI, but by identifying the urgent development problems they are trying to solve.
Iagê Miola (Director, National Data Protection Agency), Doron Avni (Vice President, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Emerging Markets, Google), Valérie Traoré (Founder and Executive Director, Niyel), and Olayinka David-West (Dean and Professor of Information Systems, Lagos Business School) discuss the key points.
Transcriptions
Iagê Miola
Governments are increasingly looking at AI as an instrument, and I think that is very important. AI is not an end in itself, especially for governments, given that it is expensive and it demands resources, but AI must be seen as a tool to reach certain goals, and from the perspective of the public sector, those goals must be connected to the public interest. We of course don’t want risk avoidance to impede innovation and actually scare governments from the potential of using and resorting to AI, but at the same time all the potential of AI cannot allow us just to take extreme risks that might harm societies and populations. So reaching this balance is absolutely crucial and I think one way of trying to think about a possible way of reaching this is through the idea of trust. And I think that for us to have accountability in respect to AI solutions in the public sector, one important way forward is to have rules and regulation on what governments can do with these tools and if something goes wrong what will happen and who will be held accountable. This is a key element from my point of view, regulation and balanced regulation to enable accountability.
Doron Avni
I believe that AI is the most transformational technology of our lifetime and for emerging markets, this is a real opportunity to leapfrog and bypass past technologies. In Kenya, where we partnered with Jacaranda Health, they have this unique ultrasound devices that they put in the hands of nurses to do ultrasound tests for pregnant women, and there’s no need for them to understand how to do the practicalities of ultrasound because AI does the work for them. Another example is in Ghana, where we piloted in 14 schools and brought AI in to help teachers to grade exams. And we saw that the teachers were happy, obviously they saved time. They don’t love grading exams. But also, interestingly, the students were happy because they got much more granular feedback from the AI which helps them improve and get better. A third example is climate resilience. We have a tool for flood forecasting, river flood forecasting and what we do is we bring together satellite imagery, local weather data with AI and with this tool we can predict floods seven days before it hits and we can send alerts to people on the ground so AI can really save lives. Innovation is a team sport so it’s not just for government to lead the way it’s also for private sector to support and for civil society and this is why we’re here at Wilton Park to discuss how we can move fast together.
Valérie Traoré
The starting point of government should not be, how do I deploy AI? The starting of government should be, what are the urgent development problems I’m trying to solve? AI has the potential of greatly transforming the public sector, primarily because it would be able to remove a lot of bottlenecks that make the public set sector slow and that can make the sector bothersome by people and citizens that need services from the public sector. Essentially, the public sector is serving a population. And one of the biggest challenges that we’ve had for decades or forever is how slow the public sector can be and how difficult it might be to access services. And this is where by streamlining some processes, by eliminating some useless or not very useful tasks or processes, it might make it faster, more efficient, and easier for people to use. The starting point of government should not be how do I deploy AI. The starting point of the government should be what are the urgent development problems I’m trying to solve? What is it that I need to be able to provide to my people, to my community? How do I run an efficient system, an effective system that serves everyone? Once governments identify that, then the question is, what AI can help me do this faster, better, and with the limited resources that I have?
Professor Olayinka David-West
How can we use these technologies to bridge gaps? How do we use AI to change lives and provide better quality of access, better quality care, and better quality lives for people? What do emerging economies need to be doing now to reap the potential in 10 years time? And we need to start now. We need to start to galvanise. We need start to educate one another. We need to start to coordinate what we’re doing. We have to also be mindful that while AI can take us in one direction, it has its harms and its risks. So we need to be cautious. We need to understand what we are trying to do, what the harms are, and build around the harms or educate around the harm or really govern the harms. We need more proactiveness, because the developers are not going to wait for three months to get an approval for something that they need to launch yesterday. AI is now another emerging technology that has sort of put back this need and this imperative for governments to take their digital transformation strategies a bit more seriously.