Taki Netshitenzhe, Director of External Affairs, Vodacom South Africa.
Vodacom is a pioneer in social, digital and economic transformation, in the markets in which it operates, through technological innovation and is now leading the discussion and practical application of the scalable use and governance of intelligence artificial intelligence and big data analytics to drive radical change. . In a recent report from McKinsey & Company, progress made with AI indicates that Africa could contribute up to US$1.2 trillion to the global economy by 2030, representing an increase of 5 .6% of Africa’s GDP. Although Africa tends to lag behind developed countries in the adoption of emerging digital technologies, there is significant potential for AI in Africa, both from an economic and humanitarian perspective.
The scale of this potential is largely due to the diversity of benefits that AI offers, including in contributing to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. For example, AI was used by academics at the University of Johannesburg to predict early peaks of the Covid-19 pandemic in South Africa. Policymakers and public health officials were able to use this information to quantify the impact of government interventions and plan ahead. Similarly, Vodacom used AI and big data analytics to help the government curb the spread of Covid-19 after a superspreader event in the Free State, by predicting the movements of attendees and preventing further spread later, using movement modeling. This intervention was a game-changer at the start of the pandemic.
Major holiday periods are a great example of how we leverage AI and big data analytics to help with mobile network planning and managing increased congestion when people migrate from one province to each other, to ensure that we continue to provide acceptable standards of service quality. While these major holiday periods are happy times for most, the number of incidents on the roads tends to increase due to drink driving, fatigue and reckless driving. Using AI and big data analytics, government officials may be able to better identify problem areas, placing officers in strategic locations to manage the circumstances that led to these deaths.
AI and big data analytics also have the potential to completely revolutionize the way we approach education access and educational outcomes by identifying learners who are struggling or likely to drop out prematurely. This would give educators the opportunity to step in, providing additional academic and emotional help.
As AI evolves, we are seeing an explosion of generative AI tools such as GPT-4, AlphaCode, Bard, Claude, ChatGPT, to name a few. AI’s ability to generate text, images, and other media has been both a blessing and a curse for education, media, and entertainment. In the entertainment world, people have started using AI to generate lyrics and soundtracks with minimal effort. For example, the late rapper Ricky Rick, who sadly committed suicide, was able to convey a strong and positive message about mental health from beyond the grave using AI. Ricky’s family, working with their industry partners, used AI to create a song using words from his social media posts. This evolution and creativity are phenomenal but also raise a number of ethical and legal questions, particularly in terms of intellectual property rights.
Generative AI is a fantastic tool that can be used effectively for research and proofreading. Although generative AI can supplement and/or supplement certain functions of the human brain, it still lacks the ability to identify misinformation and struggles to manage copyright requirements when extracting a source. Therefore, caution is advised when using these tools.
Privacy and data privacy are other areas of concern in the use of AI and big data analytics. Due to its open source nature, anyone who puts their data into a generative AI platform risks that information being stolen or compromised. Again, this is an issue that has arisen due to the lack of comprehensive regulation and has caused some people to be wary of anything that uses AI. Another area of concern is bias (including unconscious bias) in the use of AI that perpetuates racial and gender stereotypes through biased profiling.
Several countries will go to the polls around the world in 2024 and AI and big data analytics could play a central role in elections. Used responsibly, AI and big data analytics can improve election administrative processes by processing vast election data managed by election agencies and how politicians deliver their campaign messages to their constituencies. However, in the absence of regulation, the usefulness of generative AI during this time has been called into question. Its vulnerability to manipulation leaves many people wondering about AI’s potential to influence perceptions through misinformation and perpetuate biased opinions that do not reflect those of the electorate.
Due to the lack of effective regulation on AI and big data analytics globally, issues of privacy, confidentiality, copyright, ethics and bias are subject of major debate. The European Parliament appears to be on the verge of finalizing the regulation of AI. Additionally, several governments around the world are debating ways to manage the use of AI, either through broad national legislation or sector-specific regulation. It is prudent that each country encourages the responsible and ethical use of AI, based on its cultural, social and economic nuances, in order to promote, among others, fairness, security, transparency, fairness and ‘equality.
As a champion of the responsible use of AI and big data analytics, Vodacom strives to manage its use of these tools through self-regulation, as we integrate them into our operations within the company and in our offers to customers. Recently, following the guidelines we use on big data analytics, the company developed guidelines on using generative AI to promote innovation and manage the aforementioned concerns regarding ethics , bias, copyright, confidentiality and privacy.
As advocates of technological innovation, we are aware of the pitfalls of using AI and big data analytics and the need to manage these tools carefully. Therefore, the concerns should not outweigh the benefits. Instead, debates over effective regulation, whether state-funded or state-funded initiatives, are key to finding lasting solutions that won’t stifle innovation.
