Digital chains?

WESTERN BUREAU:

Professor Canute Thompson, head of education, policy, planning and leadership at The University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona, says while AI is being hailed as the future of global innovation, it could also become the tool of digital colonialism.

According to Thompson, who was speaking to The Gleaner on the sidelines of the Jamaica Association of Education Office’s annual general meeting and symposium, which was held in Montego Bay last week, the fundamental elements of AI have been around for the last 60 years.

“AI is to be viewed, not so much as a revolution in what’s taking place in the world, but an evolution,” explained Thompson. “What we are seeing in the last three to five years is an exponential increase in the various AI solutions and tools, but each of them has ingredients that go back to the last 60 years,”

In fact, Thompson further argued that what the world now calls AI is simply a faster, more powerful version of technologies already familiar to us.

“Thirty years ago, with the answering machine at your home ... a person calls and the device records that the person has left a message ... that’s a form of AI. We have improved or increased the kinds of solutions, but AI is not a new thing,” he emphasised.

But while he sees AI as an important tool, Thompson also sees some negatives, noting that his concern is not about the technology itself, but about who controls it.

“AI could be a form of colonialism, in the sense that the people who are developing these solutions will try to control your life. You are now a subject, and large populations are subjects of AI data gathering. That data that they gather is then presented to you in ways that make you feel that unless you are what is presented, you are a different creature,” he said.

In blunt terms, Thompson likened the relationship between consumers and AI developers to modern-day economic bondage.

“All these are solutions that are developed to further the economic interests of people who own those technologies. And once you are a consumer of a product that a person has developed, you are potentially a colonised person,” said Thompson, who is also pro vice-chancellor for undergraduate studies at UWI.

Given that perspective, Thompson said Jamaica and other developing nations must stop being passive consumers of imported technology in order not to become colonised.

“One of the things we need to emphasise in order to make an education system, is that we need to become developers of the technology rather than just the purchasers and users of that technology,” he said.