Accelerating towards a more inclusive society with AI and Blockchain
An interview with Samiran Ghosh
In a career spanning 25 years, Samiran has held leadership roles at McKinsey, Microsoft, IBM, Dun & Bradstreet and TCS. He is on the global panel of MIT Technology Review, a TEDx speaker, a Forbes Technology Council member and an AI & Blockchain thought leader.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution , normally characterized by the utilization of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, 3D printing, blockchain , Internet of Things, 5G among others — has ushered in a new era of economic disruption with uncertain socio-economic consequences, especially for the Global South.
Samiran Ghosh has worked at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain, especially in the context of the global south. As the Chief Digital Advisor at Microsoft, he worked on platforms like the Connected Vehicle, Digital Agriculture and Smart Cities. These initiatives all had undercurrents of massive societal impact. Most recently, at Aadhaar, he helped develop the Application Authentication Framework which allows key stakeholders to engage with each other in the UIDAI ecosystem. He is a regular contributor in leading journals,and a guest lecturer in various Indian universities.
Given his expertise, I interviewed him to find out a bit more about the role technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain can play to enhance and leapfrog communities, as well as the societal issues they can create.
In your experience, what role do technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain play in social inclusion?
The broad field of AI can be a key factor in solving a variety of global problems. Let us just look at one area heavily using AI — autonomous vehicles. Experts predict that commute via self-driving cars will result in up to 90% fewer accidents; more efficient ride sharing will reduce the number of cars on the road by up to 75%, and smart traffic lights will reduce wait times by 40% and overall travel time by 26%. Even if part of this comes true, then it has far reaching implications for climate change, the environment, pollution, road safety, insurance, fuel consumption, and a host of other issues. Another interesting case is Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is using custom speech models and Microsoft technology to improve accuracy of real-time captions for students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.The examples are many and the possibilities of AI are endless.
Coming to Blockchain. In broad numbers, 1 in 7 people around the world are without any identity making it impossible for them to access goods and services. More troubling is that nearly half of the world’s children under the age of 5 — and over 600 million children under 14 years old — do not have a birth certificate or official proof of their identity. These children are “invisible” to social programs designed to protect them. Instead, they are easy prey to human traffickers — sold into modern slavery or harvested for their organs.
There is a dire need for a secure, self-sovereign digital identity that is scalable. I believe blockchain will do for digital identity what Netscape did for the internet in the 90s. It can provide an identity to the nameless and faceless people across the world so we can better target developmental programs towards them. And this is just one area it can impact: others being agriculture, human rights, financial inclusion, environment, etc.
How have you seen the impact of AI and Blockchain manifest in the Global South?
The development and deployment of AI and blockchain holds tremendous promise for much of the world, including the global south.
Artificial Intelligence — The Baby Come Back campaign in China and the work of the Snow Leopard Trust using AI are classical examples of benefits of tech in the global south.
It is estimated that every year, 250 million people around the world are affected by floods, also costing billions of dollars in damages. Flood forecasting models can more accurately predict not only when and where a flood might occur, but the severity of the event as well. Google started these flood forecasting efforts in India, where 20% of global flood-related fatalities occur by partnering with India’s Central Water Commission to get the data needed to roll out early flood warnings on a pilot basis
Blockchain — a classical case that could have far reaching impact is the Lost Votes campaign in India. 290 million eligible voters (entire nations are smaller than this) were unable to exercise their right to vote, due to migration without a permanent local address. Following a year-long campaign, the Election Commission in India recently announced that they are working on a blockchain based solution that will address the issue so that there are no more lost votes.
The most common use cases for blockchain initiatives are payments & money transfers and records & verification. A recent WEF report has called out public procurement as a key area for blockchain intervention given that 10–30% of GDP is spent on procurement which again will significantly benefit the global south.
Like the mobile revolution, the global south can leapfrog the more developed nations in AI and blockchain. The pace of digitization is a key ingredient to adoption of these technologies. Without legacy, countries and enterprises in the global south are building out modern platforms and ecosystems that will allow them to leverage the underlying data, provide actionable insights and build transparency / efficiency.
What do you perceive to be the economic value of digital identity?
Per McKinsey estimates, countries implementing digital ID could unlock value equivalent to 3 to 6% of GDP by 2030 depending on whether you are an emerging or a developed economy (extrapolated from the small sample size).
Individuals, businesses, and governments are sure to find value from the implementation / adoption of digital IDs. Individuals will benefit through access to financial services and employment. Digital IDs could provide access to cost efficient digital bank accounts and to talent-matching platforms. For business and government institutions, it would be time and cost savings, reduced fraud, increased sales of goods and services, improved productivity, and possibly higher tax revenue.
Given the importance of digital identities, what are your thoughts around identity fraud and cyber resilience?
Just like any other technology advancement, digital IDs can be used to create value or inflict harm; the same also goes for nuclear energy and even the omnipresent GPS. Without proper processes and controls, anyone with nefarious aims would gain access to and control over personal digital data. We need to therefore implement digital IDs using the most secure protocols and provide everyone with the ability to manage the end use of their data. This has led to be the birth of concepts like self-sovereign identities and decentralized identities. The risks around identity fraud and cyber-crime are now table stakes for any technology initiative and mitigation needs to be planned as part of any execution plan.
What are some of the concerns around privacy and data protection that might hinder the adoption of these technologies?
AI thrives on abundance of data. And to make these systems more efficient and effective, we have been gathering data any way we can and feeding the AI engines. But there may be a flipside to these advances. Privacy concerns are cropping up as companies feed more and more consumer and vendor data into advanced algorithms to create new and sensitive information, information that is unknown to affected consumers and employees. Meaning that AI systems may create personal data which poses a unique and serious problem
The EU has taken the lead in addressing these privacy issues through the General Data Protection Regulation and others like California, the Philippines, and South Korea are also following their lead.
And the same is true for blockchain based digital IDs. While it is secure by design, it is not foolproof. The risk of breaches is real. The design, governance, and use of digital ID is an evolving area. While solutions are not all known and in place, digital ID is clearly an important instrument for driving change — for economies, governments, businesses, and individuals around the world.
Despite the potential benefits of these technologies, there is a real risk that without thoughtful intervention, they may in fact intensify structural, economic, social, and political imbalances. This may further reinforce inequalities based on ethnicity, race, gender, gender and sexual identity, religion, national origin, location, and socioeconomic status. And that is a far bigger concern that we need to be cognizant of.
What role can Strategic Intelligence play in bridging the gap of information in relation to these technologies?
The World Economic Forum’s Strategic Intelligence Platform provides a trusted single window service — keeping abreast with the latest in technology and its applicability in the real world. It helps tremendously that the Forum does a lot of the heavy lifting in sifting through the material and publishing only the most relevant after careful vetting. Keeping track of dynamic topics like Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain and their impact on society is made easy through the almost intuitive ability to discover, monitor, and create content on Strategic Intelligence (SI). More importantly, it allows me to pan across diverse global issues and see their impact on different geographies and industries — that is priceless.
SI provides curated quality information from trusted sources, allows the ability to combine and compare across topics and save that information for easy future reference. It is an incredible and essential tool in my digital information arsenal.
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