BY SOLOMON DIBABA
A young man or a girl sipping coffee or tea in cafes across the cities and rural towns in Ethiopia, a women talking to her house maid to ensure if lunch is ready, a farmer in rural Ethiopia searching his cellphone for the latest technology on vegetable gardening, a student texting his girlfriend for urgent appointment, all use some product of artificial intelligence. There is more to it.
According to Ethio-telecom, to date more than 70 million Ethiopians have access to smart cellphones. Some 17% of the Ethiopian populations have access to internet services across the country while some 6% use social media. In 2022, Telebirr conducted financial transactions worth three billion USD providing service to more than 27 million subscribers in just six months. Today fuel sells are conducted only through online financial transactions. Registrations and disclosure of university entry exam results are done online. All these have indeed something to do with the utilization of artificial intelligence. What then is Artificial Intelligence?
In a popular parlance, Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by humans or by other animals. Example tasks in which this is done include speech recognition, computer vision, translation between (natural) languages, as well as other mappings of inputs.
AI is an area of computer science devoted to developing systems that can be taught or learn to make decisions and predictions within a specific context. AI applications can perform a wide range of intelligent behaviors like optimization of supply chain, saving of patterns, recognition and detections like facial detection, prediction and hypothesis testing, natural language processing, machine translation. AI impacts a wide range of daily human activities, (Matthew Smith,2018 ).
AI is utilized in strategic game systems such as chess and Go. AI applications include advanced web search engines such as Google Search), recommendation systems used by YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix, understanding human speech such as Siri and Alexa, self-driving cars e.g., Waymo), generative or creative tools like Chat GPT and AI art, automated decision-making.
As machines become increasingly capable, tasks considered to require “intelligence” are often removed from the definition of AI, a phenomenon known as the AI effect. For instance, optical character recognition is frequently excluded from things considered to be AI, having become a routine technology.
Artificial intelligence was founded as an academic discipline in 1956, and in the years since it has experienced several waves of optimism, followed by disappointment and the loss of funding followed by new approaches, success, and renewed funding. AI research has tried and discarded many different approaches, including simulating the brain, modeling human problem solving, formal logic, large databases of knowledge, and imitating animal behavior. In the first decades of the 21st century, highly mathematical and statistical machine learning has dominated the field, and this technique has proved highly successful, helping to solve many challenging problems throughout industry and academia.
The various sub-fields of AI research are centered on particular goals and the use of particular tools. The traditional goals of AI research include reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, learning, natural language processing, perception, and the ability to move and manipulate objects. General intelligence (the ability to solve an arbitrary problem) is among the fields long-term goals. To solve these, including search and mathematical optimization, formal logic, artificial neural networks, and methods based on statistics, probability, and economics.
AI also draws upon computer science, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and many other fields, problems, AI researchers have adapted and integrated a wide range of problem-solving techniques. It must be noted that AI is not a magic but a product of human intelligence.
The Ethiopian Artificial Intelligence Institute was established by the order of the Council of Ministers. The Institute, according to its posts on website is established to provide research-based artificial intelligence services and products, set national infrastructure that enables artificial intelligence research and development programs, formulate national Artificial intelligence related policies, legislation, and regulatory frameworks, create an eco-system that enables public-private interconnectivity and co addition, support private initiatives on artificial intelligence research, development, and deployment, make sure that artificial intelligence service the defense and national security-related decision-making process, ensure that artificial intelligence support socio-economic programs such as health, education, agriculture, and utilities, enables artificial intelligence to support decision making process on urban administration, land administration, national disaster prevention and environmental hazards, facilitate national database development and utilization, help human resource development on the area in collaboration higher institutions and accomplish several other tasks related to its activities.
The Institute is currently engaged in various important projects which include Breast Cancer Detection and Management, Brain Tumor Detection and Management and Skin Disease Detection and Management, Enhancing Ethiopian Crop Productivity using AI Application with emphasis on diseases management and crop data labeling, agricultural data collection and labeling Coffee Diseases Management and Specialty Tracing Using AI System, Major Annual Crop Diseases Detection and Management System Using AI Revenue Assurance in Tax Collections which includes financial fraud investigation, financial fraud corrective processes and financial fraud preventing processes , Customer Chat Bot for Ethiopian Airline using four local languages Afaan Oromo, Amharic, Somali and Tigrigna) and English language.
Striving to become owner of the state of the art technology by, the institute works with a number of local and international partners which support its activities. Speaking on the occasion of the inauguration of the Institute Prime Minister Abiy said, “Artificial Intelligence can be an engine of productivity and economic growth. In this current period where we’re taking great strides to balance the macroeconomic environment, including through the introduction of technology, I would also like to take this opportunity to caution all Ethiopians locally and abroad to not be tools of money laundering. Amidst a period of currency change, I call upon all Ethiopia loving Diaspora to use appropriate channels of remittance to ensure that you’re not a channel for illicit currency transfers”.
The author of this article believes that the introduction of AI into the development paradigm will certainly revolutionize the quality of production and productivity in all sectors of the economy with its immense contributions to the safety and security of the country through new innovations in robotics, development of the national security system and promotion of space science and technology in the country. On the other hand, it would be an effective means for promoting quality education in the country, better health services, financial security and related areas.
Some people in and overseas are already worried about the introduction of AI into the country as they think that introduction of such technology will eventually bring about further level of unemployment as machines will replace humans laying off a considerable level of labor power. They fail to see the overall advantages that AI could bring in to the promotion of the socio-economic development of the country over time.
AI is being used in many countries including African countries like Kenya and South Africa as an important tool for research development. Some of the faithful here and abroad seem to infer that using AI could lead to unidentified consequences. Some also try to guess that it is an expensive undertaking and may not be feasible for low income countries like Ethiopia.
It must be clear that in a highly competitive world, the use of modern technologies like AI could help Ethiopia to modernize the manufacturing sector and modern agriculture. Moreover, it is to be stressed that important sectors like health and education, finance and banking will certainly be obliged to use AI related technologies now and in the future. Opponents of AI are in some ways trapped by the fear of the unknown think that as ordinary people cannot use it, it would be waste of money on something that could not reach out to the people of Ethiopia. They fail to see that in their daily life they are use and encounter one kind or several kinds of AI products that are put to use by ordinary people. Artificial intelligence is nowadays widely used in videogames and in telemedicine which is a modern innovation that is being utilized in the health service providers across the globe.
For instance the strategy of Digital Ethiopia 2025 is indeed mostly based on the utilization of a wide range of AI related software development, utilization in automation technologies. Here it is important to ensure that all potential AI stakeholders are involved in developing AI in the country.
In Ethiopia, compilation, interpretation and distribution of information in the form of database or any other form strongly depend on the utilization of AI technologies over time. For instance pharmaceutical industries heavily depend on AI based automated technologies in their daily operations. Of course, the utilization of AI in Ethiopia to a greater degree depends upon the capacity of the country to construct AI infrastructure that is required for the expansion of the system across all sectors.
Popularization of AI, among other things depends upon deploying highly qualified AI professionals who can develop new AI innovations and also train professionals who can manage AI structures and activities in all sectors. The Ethiopian AI Institute may have financial and manpower limitations but can work with financial institutions in the country and international partners including universities and AI institutions overseas.
The Institute needs to expand its projects on the priority areas that can make both the country and the institute more competitive. The author is of the opinion that training talented school children who are selected to be potential candidates to be future AI scientists who can train future young generation.
Editor’s Note: The views entertained in this article do not necessarily reflect the stance of The Ethiopian Herald
The Ethiopian Herald June 4/2023
