Addressing technology concerns with technology
Rushika Bhatia
10X Technology

Addressing technology concerns with technology

The increasing digital connectivity and the automation of virtually all business processes throughout the whole value chain have led to the creation of several opportunities. But, this has also led to the development of extremely high levels of threat and significantly raised the number of challenges we face.

The world is at an inflection point when it comes to technology. On one hand, technology has enabled the meteoric boom of shared-services, education, automation, revitalized interest in space exploration and has accelerated intelligence-based industry applications. While these are positive indicators of where our world is headed, there are several challenges that point to technology reaching its growth limits.

So, how can we – firstly, understand the current challenges that technology is facing, and secondly, use technology to address those concerns?

Challenge 1: Empathy vs. AI

Jun Wu, an industry-expert, shares her thoughts: “Empathy is at the heart of ethics issues related to AI Systems. Augmented reality is only believable if that reality is as close to real as possible.” Commenting on the possible solution, she says: “This means that AI Systems have to mimic real human emotions. Only through real human emotions and personal data from you can AI systems augment a reality that you will believe in. With the popularity of social media applications, collecting personal data from you is no longer a problem. However, the real problem lies in modeling real human emotions. If scientists can train the AI System to mimic empathy, then scientists can train the AI System to have regard for law, order and societal values. In conjunction with developing empathy in our AI Systems, we can also place limits on our AI Systems. Same way that societal values, moral code and standard of social behavior help humans live better in society, AI Systems can be integrated in a similar way to help us instead of to hurt us.” Speaking along the same lines, Jesus Mantas, Global Head of Strategy and Offerings at IBM Global Business Services, shareshis thoughts with “The road to this next stage of progress begins with designing human-AI interactions that prioritize enhancing people’s humanity, not replacing it. A passionless, automatonic future would weaken what has allowed humans to survive and thrive throughout millennia. The biggest benefits of AI will be achieved by ‘chemistry-matching’ of humans and AI - and in teaching AI to be more human, we will find opportunities to learn how to be more human ourselves.”

Challenge 2: Data privacy

The opportunity that technology provides is that it can be instrumental in enabling users to get access to information and enable policy makers to make better decisions. The downside, however, is that this data can often be leaked or hacked. This challenge can be solved using stringent cybersecurity protocols such as encryption, hardware authentication, user-behavior analytics and identity and access management (IAM). In their article for, William Dixon, Head of Operations, Centre of Cybersecurity, World Economic Forum, and Dmitry Samartsev, CEO of BI.ZONE, write: “The past 10 years mark only the start of the global cybersecurity journey. New architectures and cooperation are required as we stand at the brink of a new era of cybercrime, which will be empowered by new and emergent technology. These three technologies might very well define the next 10 years of global cybersecurity: 5G networks and infrastructure convergence, AI and biometrics.”

Challenge 3: Lack of knowledge and skills

This is another major dilemma with technology. While the rapid advancement of technology has enabled us to gain unparalleled amounts of knowledge, it also means that we need to constantly upgrade our skills to stay relevant. EdTech has come to the forefront in this regard with organisations looking to online programmes and learning softwares to help their employees stay relevant within their respective fields. Organisations are using Edtech to transform their workforce and ultimately drive productivity, innovation and growth. Every businessshould focus on building a learning and development function with the right EdTech to deliver a better return on upskilling investment.