As the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) pro­pos­es the es­tab­lish­ment of a Min­istry of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, Min­is­ter of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Has­sel Bac­chus ar­gues that ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence is al­ready em­bed­ded in the tech­nol­o­gy we use dai­ly.

Speak­ing at the launch of the Min­istry’s 29th ICT Ac­cess Cen­tre at the Techi­er Vil­lage Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre in Point Fortin yes­ter­day, Bac­chus un­der­scored the in­te­gra­tion of AI across var­i­ous gov­ern­ment min­istries, in­clud­ing health­care and fi­nance.

“I do not know any­where in the world where they have min­istries of a tech­nol­o­gy. I have nev­er seen a min­istry of mo­bile, a min­istry of cel­lu­lar, a min­istry of 5G, or a min­istry of 4G. It is im­por­tant to un­der­stand that AI is a tool. It is a part of life; it is some­thing we are us­ing right now. Whether you know it or not, we are us­ing it. AI is em­bed­ded in chips; it is em­bed­ded in every­thing we do,” Bac­chus said.

UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­clared her in­ten­tion to es­tab­lish a Min­istry of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence if her par­ty re­turns to pow­er. Speak­ing at a town hall meet­ing at the La Joya Com­plex Au­di­to­ri­um two weeks ago, she un­der­scored the im­por­tance of AI and tech­nol­o­gy in dri­ving in­no­va­tion and eco­nom­ic growth. Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­plained that the pro­posed min­istry would fo­cus on lever­ag­ing AI to cre­ate jobs, im­prove sys­tems, and di­ver­si­fy rev­enue streams.

Bac­chus, how­ev­er, ques­tioned the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of such a min­istry. While ac­knowl­edg­ing its ben­e­fits, he stressed the need for reg­u­la­tion to pre­vent mis­use.

“There are a num­ber of ben­e­fi­cial us­es, but there is al­so a need to reg­u­late it so it does not be­come some­thing larg­er than need­ed.” He added that through leg­is­la­tion, the Gov­ern­ment would en­sure that mis­use con­sti­tutes a con­tra­ven­tion of the law.

Bac­chus re­it­er­at­ed that the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion would con­tin­ue to utilise all forms of tech­nol­o­gy, in­clud­ing AI, as tools to en­hance ef­fi­cien­cy.

“Hav­ing a min­istry spe­cif­ic to one—well, I am not sure how that works.”

While he re­frained from com­ment­ing on the UNC’s ra­tio­nale for propos­ing such min­istries, Bac­chus high­light­ed the gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to ex­pand ICT Ac­cess Cen­tres, en­abling cit­i­zens to ac­cess on­line ser­vices and train­ing.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns about dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy, Bac­chus point­ed to the Min­istry’s web­site, which lists sev­er­al train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for cit­i­zens to fa­mil­iarise them­selves with var­i­ous tech­nolo­gies. He ac­knowl­edged that some in­di­vid­u­als, par­tic­u­lar­ly the el­der­ly and those in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, might be hes­i­tant to adopt on­line ser­vices. How­ev­er, he ex­pressed con­fi­dence that ex­po­sure to tech­nolo­gies like kiosks would en­cour­age grad­ual adap­ta­tion.

“Dig­i­tal in­clu­sion means that so­ci­ety must help each oth­er to learn and move for­ward in­to this new tech­no­log­i­cal world,” Bac­chus said.