This is the less glamorous end of development. Reforming bureaucracies. Changing incentives. Strengthening accountability. Negotiating political settlements. Making institutions actually work. Occasionally persuading powerful people that reform might involve surrendering some of their power.
It is slow, difficult and deeply unsexy work. Which helps explain the enduring appeal of technology.
If technology can solve the problem, perhaps the hard work can be avoided.
And every new innovation offers the same seductive bargain: more development, less politics.
Now it is artificial intelligence’s turn. And this time, the promise is considerably bigger. So is the ambiguity.
Artificial intelligence is a technology, a collection of technologies, a general-purpose technology, an industry, a revolution, an existential threat and, depending on who is selling it, the solution to almost everything.
That ambiguity allows AI to carry both extraordinary fear and extraordinary promise. Everyone gets to imagine the version they expect.
Ask 10 people what artificial intelligence means and you are likely to get 11 answers. Whatever definition people choose, its impact on development is already visible (Opens in new window). It can translate languages, diagnose disease, support teachers, analyse crops, detect disasters and process quantities of information that would overwhelm any government department.
For countries with limited resources and enormous needs, that is an extraordinary proposition.
But there are limits to what intelligence, artificial or otherwise, can solve.
An algorithm can identify which children are most likely to leave school (Opens in new window). It cannot make a government care whether they do.
It can tell governments where poverty is concentrated (Opens in new window), where violence is likely to erupt (Opens in new window) or which communities are being left behind. It cannot decide whose interests matter.
That isn’t a computing problem but a political choice.
Put AI in capable, accountable institutions (Opens in new window) and it can make them considerably better at what they do. Put it in institutions that are corrupt, exclusionary or unaccountable and it may make them considerably better at that too.
The experience with Facebook in Myanmar offered a warning.
Technology doesn’t arrive in a political vacuum. It inherits the institutions, interests and divisions already there.
Artificial intelligence will be no different.
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