LAHORE (APP) - Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal has said that as industrial revolution reshapes societies similarly artificial intelligence (AI) will reshape governance in the country.
He said this while addressing the third National School of Public Policy Conference on ‘Artifical Intelligence in Public Policy and Governance’ organized by the National Institute of Public Policy (NIPP) in collaboration with the National School of Public Policy (NSPP) at the NSPP on Monday.
He said: “We can use artificial intelligence to win various ‘Markas’ which includes ‘Marka-i-Education’, ‘Marka-i-Health’, ‘Marka-i-Trade’, ‘Marka-i-Research and Technology.”
“If we combine wisdom of our civil service through power of AI, we can build Pakistan that is prosperous, inclusive and globally competitive by 2035 to realize dream of turning Pakistan into 1 trillion dollar economy,” he added.
The minister said there was a need to immediately establish AI training centre for officers at the NSPP and other training centres to improve their capability.
The minister emphasized on working with startups, universities and industry to co-create AI governance solutions because it requires a collaborative efforts.
The officers must be AI literate, he said and added that the NSPP must launch an AI centre for civil servants training and to study how we could adopt AI fast in governance and civil service.
He said, “We must not overlook the ethics part of AI.” The federal minister said, “We must ensure that AI is transparent, fair and respects privacy of data. AI is based on algorithms and quality of algorithms would define what is utility of AI. Because if your algorithms are not fair, if they contain biases, so AI will also give those biases.”
He said: “It is extremely important that, you know, we also look at the fairness dimension of AI and see that the algorithms are fair and do not have discrimination or biases.”
Ahsan Iqbal said, “In a country like Pakistan, which is very diverse, it has to be ensured that it is right. Similarly, the authenticity of data, the fuel of AI is data. And if your data is not accurate, it is not timely, it is not updated, AI will not do much.”
He said: “We are a generation which is passing through some of the most spectacular times in human history and I often say that in our lifetime, we have seen the journey from ‘Takhti’ to 5G and in coming years, probably this change will happen even in less than six years. So that is the speed of change with which we have to grapple in future.”
The minister said it was the fundamental challenge of our times that technology, a new revolution in technology and particularly digital technologies, biotechnology, automation, robotics, now in future quantum computing, all these technologies were going to bring about a change on a scale that had not been seen ever in our history.