The ManicaPost
Gift T Mushohwe and Luxene Ngoie Kakudie
WE are all responsible for ensuring that Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes off and transforms Zimbabwe as we know it.
In order to influence artificial intelligence’s destiny, we must be responsible, knowledgeable, and involved.
It must be in line with our beliefs, objectives, and interests.
We must make sure it is trustworthy, morally sound, and helpful for everyone.
Artificial Intelligence is the ability of a computer system or a robot to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.
This can influence various aspects of society in positive and negative ways, depending on how it is developed and used.
Clearly identifiable democratic systems are distinct in that they give every member an impression of control over social projects and inspire many to view one another as accountable participants in all aspects of life.
Artificial Intelligence can help governments improve public services, enhance transparency, and reduce corruption.
It can also support democratic processes, such as voting, deliberation, and civic engagement.
However, this can also pose challenges to governance, such as privacy, accountability, and human rights issues.
Artificial Intelligence can enable mass surveillance, profiling, and targeting of individuals and groups, by using data analysis, facial recognition, and digital forensics.
This can erode the trust and confidence of citizens and undermine their autonomy and dignity.
By employing sophisticated, autonomous algorithms, it might lessen human oversight and control over decision-making processes.
This may make it challenging to assign, blame and establish legal liability for the injuries that AI causes to other people bringing to light the issues of accountability.
By developing new tools for manipulation and disinformation like deep fakes, fake news, and bots, Artificial Intelligence has the potential to erode the respect and preservation of fundamental human rights including freedom of speech, nondiscrimination, and participation.
This has the potential to skew reality and affect voters’ attitudes and actions.
AI can boost economic growth, productivity, and innovation.
It can also create new markets, industries, and jobs.
However, this can also disrupt existing markets, industries, jobs, increase inequality, unemployment, and social unrest.
In a variety of industries, including healthcare, banking, retail, logistics, cybersecurity, transportation, and marketing, this can either supplement or replace human labour.
Along with potential issues for skills, education, and labour market regulation, this may also open up new avenues for innovation and productivity.
Artificial Intelligence has the potential to widen the economic, talent, and digital divides, which will exacerbate inequality both inside and across the nation.
This has the potential to worsen social and economic inequality by influencing how money, power, and opportunities are distributed.
Since this technology reduces the demand for certain forms of labour, particularly repetitive and low-skilled work, it can lead to underemployment and unemployment.
This may have an impact on workers’ livelihoods and general well-being, which may make social protection and welfare programmes more necessary.
Security can be enhanced, such as by preventing crime, terrorism, and war.
This technology can also improve disaster response, humanitarian aid, and peacekeeping.
However, Artificial Intelligence can also threaten security, such as by enabling new forms of crime, terrorism, and war.
It can also increase the risk of accidents, errors, and conflicts.
By employing data analysis, facial recognition, and digital forensics to launch cyber-attacks, pose as high-ranking officials, produce deep fakes, and produce disinformation and propaganda, it has the potential to facilitate new forms of crime, terrorism, and warfare.
This might cause financial losses, upend business structures, erode democracy and confidence, and destabilise the nation.
By decreasing human control and oversight over decision-making processes, developing autonomous and complicated algorithms, and introducing new vulnerabilities and biases, can also significantly raise the likelihood of mishaps, blunders, and disputes.
This may make it harder to assign blame and establish legal liability, jeopardise human rights protection and respect, and have unforeseen repercussions and escalate situations.
It can also challenge the sovereignty of a country as new types of digital sovereignty, defined as a country’s capacity to direct its own digital course and which may encompass command over the complete supply chain, from data to hardware and software can be made possible by a digital gap and competition for crucial resources and skills, like Artificial Intelligence talent, data centres, and computer chips, may result from this.
Artificial Intelligence can promote human rights, such as by advancing, health, also empower marginalised groups, such as women, minorities, and refugees.
However, it can also violate human rights, such as by discriminating, exploiting, and harming people.
This can also undermine human dignity, autonomy, and agency.
Discriminating, it might generate unfair and biased results by applying opaque or unaccountable algorithms or by utilising data that reinforces preconceived notions and stereotypes already in place.
People’s rights to equality and nondiscrimination may be impacted by this, particularly those of vulnerable and marginalised groups.
By exploiting data that violates people’s privacy and consent or by producing deepfakes and digital replicas that trick and mislead people, Artificial Intelligence might facilitate new kinds of exploitation and abuse.
People’s rights to dignity and privacy may be impacted by this, particularly those of women and children.
When this creates autonomous systems that have the potential to inflict violence and injury, or uses data that exposes people to security risks and dangers, it can bring harm to people physically and psychologically.
Artificial Intelligence has the potential to undermine people’s agency and autonomy by utilising data to shape people’s beliefs and actions or by developing systems that limit their participation and control.
Consequently, rather from being a neutral or deterministic force, Artificial Intelligence is a complex and dynamic phenomenon that requires careful and responsible administration and supervision.
Zimbabwe and other countries need to embrace a human-centred, moral approach to (AI) that respects the principles and values of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.
Governments, the media, academia, civic society, and the private sector are just a few of the many stakeholders that need to collaborate on this.
In addition, among other things, it calls for the development and application of appropriate policies, procedures, oversight committees, and auditing methods.
Education and empowerment are also essential for enabling people’ meaningful participation and representation in the AI era, as well as for increasing their knowledge and critical thinking skills.
Gift T Mushohwe and Luxene Ngoie Kakudie are students at Africa University in the Faculty of International Relations and Diplomacy
