So, here I am yet again—dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and tech­nol­o­gy and our re­fusal as a na­tion to em­brace prospec­tive ben­e­fits.

If you have been fol­low­ing this con­stant re­frain over the years (no, I was not silent about it “for nine and a half years”), you would know that I have been con­sis­tent­ly call­ing out the gross neg­li­gence.

I have not been alone, and I won’t call any oth­er name but that of my me­dia col­league, Mark Lyn­der­say, who has re­peat­ed­ly (and in vain) point­ed to the short­com­ings in our own em­bat­tled sec­tor and the penal­ties we have al­ready be­gun to pay.

So, this is not about every­body else ex­cept us. All ah we falling short. As a sex­a­ge­nar­i­an jour­nal­ism ed­u­ca­tor, I am al­so acute­ly mind­ful of the fact that the cur­rent dig­i­tal gen­er­a­tion is aeons ahead of the out­go­ing ana­logue rul­ing class but pays a heavy price through de­ri­sion and scorn for their psy­cho-so­cial as­sets.

This is par­tic­u­lar­ly so when those in charge are called up­on to grasp the re­quire­ments of tools as­so­ci­at­ed with in­tel­li­gent au­toma­tion, of which gen­er­a­tive AI is but one com­po­nent.

Rou­tine­ly and in­cor­rect­ly de­scribed as “AI”, in­tel­li­gent au­toma­tion is the ban­ner un­der which much of cur­rent tech­ni­cal in­no­va­tion re­sides, in­clud­ing “AI”, ma­chine learn­ing, and da­ta an­a­lyt­ics. I am em­ploy­ing time and space to get to the point, be­cause de­ci­sion-mak­ers of­ten ap­pear ig­no­rant of the fact that dis­crete tools of sig­nif­i­cant val­ue are not stand­alone fea­tures of the process of au­toma­tion.

Past un­der­stand­ing of this has meant that there are no gov­ern­ment min­istries of ham­mers and screw­drivers. We have had, in­stead, min­istries and agen­cies charged with de­vel­op­ing spe­cif­ic in­fra­struc­ture—hous­es, roads, and build­ings—the end prod­ucts or as­pi­ra­tions.

In the cur­rent con­text, the world has al­so gone be­yond ba­sic mech­a­ni­sa­tion, elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, and ear­ly dig­i­tal au­toma­tion. En­ter 70-year-old “ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence” as an en­hanced tool of au­toma­tion with gen­er­a­tive ca­pac­i­ty, but not as an end in it­self.

See where I’m go­ing with this tech­nol­o­gy thing? As a re­lat­ed aside, let me point to one of my sev­er­al peeves. It’s Wednes­day to­day, and by now I would have com­plet­ed a sil­ly lit­tle form pre­sent­ed to ex­it­ing air trav­ellers.

It is a form—mi­nus a field—I have had to use my pen to com­plete be­cause some­body in au­thor­i­ty, and lack­ing self-es­teem, thought that this piece of pa­per needs the ex­piry date on my pass­port (which is al­ready right there in my air­line book­ing, by the way … and on the pass­port you just swiped on your ma­chine).

If I had the space here, you would have been able to see (on an AI-gen­er­at­ed di­a­gram I have cre­at­ed) where that piece of pa­per re­sides along the evo­lu­tion­ary chain of au­to­mat­ed process­es. This is like dri­ving a steam-pow­ered car. Watch­ing TV with­out a re­mote. Cal­cu­lat­ing a bill with an aba­cus.

If it is of any com­fort, we are not the on­ly ones find­ing com­fort lodged in the sew­er line of the ob­so­lete. In fact, there are oth­er coun­tries that (le­git­i­mate­ly) have the ar­gu­ments of lim­it­ed vir­tu­al and pow­er in­fra­struc­ture, pro­hib­i­tive costs, so­cio-cul­tur­al ob­sta­cles, lan­guage con­straints, and sys­temic eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances that pro­hib­it progress to new lev­els.

Then there are those, like us, who trail be­hind on ac­count of glar­ing pol­i­cy and reg­u­la­to­ry gaps, trust deficits, par­tic­u­lar­ly by those in charge, and re­sis­tance to change by key op­er­a­tives.

I hap­pen to be­lieve the lat­ter con­di­tion ap­plies both to the State and pri­vate sec­tors. We should all by now be bru­tal­ly aware of the at­trac­tive, dig­i­tal fa­cades that skil­ful­ly mask man­u­al back­ends … com­plete with pens, pen­cils, and pa­per.

It is thus not en­cour­ag­ing in the con­text of all of this to hear of what ap­pear to be be­lat­ed learn­ings, lead­ing to of­fi­cial ex­cite­ment, on the need for “tech­nol­o­gy” in polic­ing, or that “na­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion” is to be de­ployed in their cur­rent sta­t­ic man­i­fes­ta­tions as an in­stru­ment to as­sist in mon­i­tor­ing cit­i­zen ac­tiv­i­ty.

The thing is that for of­fi­cial pol­i­cy to be da­ta-dri­ven and sci­en­tif­ic in the mod­ern era, there needs to be a high num­ber of read­i­ly avail­able, dig­i­tal­ly gen­er­at­ed datasets fo­cused on the is­sue be­ing ad­dressed. Or else all you have is vaps and ar­bi­trari­ness … or the least re­li­able qual­i­ty of all—po­lit­i­cal in­tu­ition com­pul­sive­ly sub­ject to fol­ly and prej­u­dice.

So, yes, there is a con­nec­tion be­tween our gen­er­al tar­di­ness when it comes to en­gag­ing tech­no­log­i­cal tran­si­tions and de­ci­sion-mak­ing based on re­li­able, sci­en­tif­ic in­for­ma­tion.

If you are catch­ing my drift, this is all linked to the form they hand you on the plane up­on your re­turn. It’s al­so rel­e­vant to the mys­te­ri­ous gap be­tween 21 and 25-year-olds. Think about it. Please!