Can artificial intelligence help improve the relationship between citizens and government? Will the government be able to replace some civil service positions with artificial intelligence in the near future? How will artificial intelligence change healthcare, security, policymaking? These issues have been discussed in the West for a long time.
At the panel discussion “Artificial intelligence in civil service”, hosted by the University of Central Asia and co-organized by StrategEast, these issues were discussed in relation to Eurasian countries.
“Artificial intelligence solutions are not the future, they are a reality, this is what chat-bots and other programs are all about,” says Evgeny Koren, Country Manager at Microsoft Belarus. “Therefore, when we talk about the use of AI in civil service, the only question is whether the state is interested in implementing such solutions. The state understands that due to AI deployment, many officials may lose their jobs in spheres like tax services and others. The question today is not whether AI-based solutions work, but rather how we implement responsive solutions; think what will happen to people and their jobs after the implementation of such solutions.”
“People are becoming the main asset. People are our “new oil”. Not only people, but also their personal data. This is the main thing that the state should understand today,” says Andrei Shubadziorau, GR-director at EPAM Systems Belarus. “EPAM Belarus has 10 thousand employees today. Moreover, we have all the information about each of our employees. We know when one wants to quit and we are ready to offer him/her a new project to make him/her stay. As a result of our work with the data on our employees, the capitalization of EPAM per employee has grown over the past 4 years from USD 22,000 to USD 38,000.”
“Being a Swede living and working in Georgia, I know the Swedish experience of implementing civil services and can compare,” says Petter Svaetichin, Chief Executive Officer at Neiron, Georgia. “I can see that in Georgia, in fact, solutions for civil society are not developed at all. We at our company designed a conduit about how we can help establish such services. The first thing is to remove the stigma from people regarding artificial intelligence and computer solutions in general. People are afraid of this, they are afraid of computer solutions, of losing their jobs. They are afraid of this as of everything unknown and incomprehensible. The only solution to this problem is education. With this in mind, we opened Neuron Academy, where we educate people about what artificial intelligence is and how it works. ”
Answering the question from the audience on how AI can improve e-government, Oleh Hrynyk, Data & Analytics Consultant, Head of Data Architecture, Data Practice coordinator at EPAM Systems Ukraine spoke about the fact that AI is able to predict many future trends. In particular, it can predict trends regarding the labor market, future specialists in demand. For students, this will mean that they can make more informed choices when deciding on their future specialty.
Answering the question by the panel moderator Shaukat Ali Khan, Chief Information Officer at the University of Central Asia on what scenarios he sees for the future implementation of AI in civil service, Mr. Koren said: “We need to start with AI solutions that immediately bring obvious benefits, such as an ability to find fraud in taxes. Moreover, we have such solutions. This decision can bring additional revenues to the state budget without increasing taxes. We are discussing the implementation of these solutions in Belarus and Georgia. Another scenario that I see, and I see it on a living example of our cooperation with one of the Georgian ministries, is the use of small solutions, with investments of EUR 5,000-10,000, for small private businesses.”
The recording is available here.
