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Technology and Development Redux
ChatGPT Productivity and Hallucinations Mix
Undoubtedly, ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. Few will dare deny such a non-violent takeover. And, as expected, the now familiar digital innovation hype factory is holding yet another massive and seemingly endless ball, including reluctant doomsayers. OpenAI’s March
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Internet Metaphors in Practice – II
A couple of years later, I installed our first Wi-Fi router, allowing us to connect our laptops to the network from almost any point in the house. But wireless connection speeds were limited to 11 Mbps while the good old
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Internet Metaphors in Practice – I
The first time I ever bought something over the Internet was in 1994. And it was not from Amazon, but from a now long-gone company called CDNow. As its name suggests, its core business was selling CDs online. Interestingly, one
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The Dynamics of Global Development, South and North
The Development of Development In its beginnings, unmovable numeric rankings permeated the always slippery and bumpy development racetrack. Stuck in first place were a selected group of countries labeled as developed, even though many were still rebuilding their economies after
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AI’s Seemingly Elusive Infrastructure – II
Undoubtedly, the infrastructural requirements used to produce the 2020 175 billion GPT-3 model are hefty by most standards. But, of course, that just means that competitors now striving to generate their own creatures on the same genre must have access
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Chatting with ChatGPT
OpenAI’s new shiny chatbot, with the not-so-brilliant name of ChatGPT, has taken the world by storm, surprising most, company staff included. Evidence of the latter stems from the fact that whenever one tries to access the platform, a message announcing
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How Green is AI?
Playing Games My father taught me how to play chess when I was nine years old or thereabouts. He played his fair share of games while he was studying engineering. He told me that a few of his classmates quit
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ICTs and Emissions – V
Walking Around the Main Gallery Unlike its basement, the abode’s main gallery is noisy, crowded and chaotic, offering a maze-like layout we need to navigate safely. Indeed, one can easily get lost, and while checking in is pretty simple, finding
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Digital Technologies and Sustainable Development: The Missing Link
Context Nowadays, digital technologies occupy most interstices of society. While the global pandemic exposed glaring gaps, especially in developing countries, avoiding their mantra seems torturous. Undoubtedly, their rapid diffusion in the last 30 years is historical (Comin & Mestieri, 2018).
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ICTs and Emissions – IV
Environmental Footprints As previously mentioned, data centers (DCs) depend not only on energy consumption but also require plenty of water for survival, just like humans. We thus have increasing competition for a critical resource, especially when droughts and wildfires are
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ICTs and Emissions – III
The Abode is a Humongous Shopping Mall As some pundits have observed, data centers (DCs) are the backbone of the digital realm – hiding in plain sight, I would add. However, they do not live alone in their noisy, albeit
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ICTs and Emissions – II
Cyberspace Mansions In 2009, amid the Global Financial Crisis, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) announced plans to create a 1.2 billion dollar data center (DC) in Utah. Indeed, surveillance once again proved it is immune to economic disasters, regardless
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ICTs and Emissions – I
Digital technologies’ social ubiquitousness is indisputable. Indeed, escaping their mantra seems unreal, almost dystopic, regardless of location or connectivity. The TINA (there is no alternative) principle appears to be entirely at work here. It is thereby paradoxical new ICTs are
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Economic Growth and Sustainable Development
In a previous entry, I explored the connections between digital technologies, economic growth and the environment, using the concept of Sustainable Development (SD) as analytical reference. The figure below depicts yet another way to see the three development outcomes that
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More Carbon Inequality
IPCC reports usually include an annex containing a climate glossary where key terms are succinctly defined. The latest report is no exception, providing an extensive dictionary consuming over 30 pages of text – yet less than 1% of the report’s
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More Light on Financial Inclusion
In a couple of recent posts, I briefly traced the history of financial inclusion and its links to the emergence and diffusion of digital technologies. A recently published book by Nick Bernards tackles the same issue more comprehensively while taking
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Carbon Inequality
My previous post highlighted a gap between the Glasgow CoP26 mitigation targets and GHG emissions data. The best example here is the selection of methane as a priority while the big elephant in the room, CO2, mentioned in passing, escaped
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Net-zero Emissions and Developing Countries – II
As discussed in the previous post, low-income and most low-middle-income countries play almost no role in methane emissions. Therefore, embarking on related targets and projects will not make a dent on a global scale. Instead, it might end up increasing
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Net-zero Emissions and Developing Countries – I
If Climate Change rings to many of us as an almost insurmountable global challenge, then net-zero has recently emerged as its apparent universal solution. The coin has finally been imprinted with two clearly defined sides, in constant and inseparable opposition.
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Towards a Public Internet?
Memory insists on telling me every so often that the first time I ever used the Internet was at the tail end of the 1980s. A couple of years earlier, the college where I was struggling to finish my Ph.D.
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Digital Technologies and Sustainable Development
1. Overall context Much water has already gone under the bridge on this topic. Yet the flow shows no signs of coming to a halt soon. In the early days of the so-called “Internet revolution,” only a few were connecting
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Financial Inclusion and Democratizing Finance – III
Show me the money The impact of initiatives such as Grameen Bank (Village phone included) and M-Pesa is still under discussion. From a poverty reduction perspective, the effect has been much more limited. Many countries in the Global South have
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Financial Inclusion and Democratizing Finance – II
Where are the banks? It seems paradoxical that the mainstream history of micro-finance/financial inclusion does not consider banks. After all, banks are supposed to “bank the unbanked.” So banks are not only missing from such a narrative. They are also
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Financial Inclusion and Democratizing Finance – I
From Noise to Signal A couple of weeks ago, El Salvador’s CryptoPopulist President shared on social media news about an international “Bitcoin” meeting his country was hosting starting May 16. He also listed the names of the 44 entities participating
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The Environment and “Socialist” States
Thirty-six years after it first broke the news for the wrong reasons, Chernobyl is back in the headlines thanks to the horrible and absurd Russian invasion. Sixteen months before the well-known Soviet nuclear meltdown of 1986, a plant located in
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ICTs and Development Theories – II
Linking ICTs to development External researchers and experts poking for the first time into ICTD might assume that the field has, 30 years after its birth, a cohesive theory on how ICTs impact development. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
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ICTs and Development Theories – I
ICTD overview The field of ICTD first saw the light over 30 years ago1 Selected references are provided at the end of the 2nd part of this post. Its overall scope is ambitious as it covers several sectors and thematic
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State Capacity and Digital Technologies – I
To the Moon and Back It was my elder sister’s 25th birthday when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. We watched the unprecedented event on B&W TV – our grandma openly expressing total skepticism. We then went out for a
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Hacking Public Policy Making with AI
Modern Evidence-based Policy Making (EBPC) has been around for 25 years, imported into the mainstream from the health sector and its success with randomized controlled trials. The latter has now spread to many other sectors and research areas. A few
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Global Wealth Distribution
GDP (Gross Domestic Product), the statistic most frequently used to measure wealth creation in terms of goods and services, has been the subject of critical review for the last 25 years. Green National Accounting (GNA) and the ensuing Green National
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A Fuzzy Das Kapital Word Cloud
A few months ago, the top U.S. General was summoned by a Congressional Committee to explain why “Critical Race Theory” was being taught in the military. The General’s response built on the idea that the better one knows the enemy,
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Digital Government and Social Leaders
As part of an online course on Digital Government for Social Leaders, I was asked to develop a script for a five-minute animation where an Avatar will introduce the topic and entice the leaders to embrace it as part of
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AI National Policies – III
Policy Evolution Comparatively speaking, AI national policies and strategies have evolved much slower than other digital strategies such as ICT, Digital Government, and Open Data. That might seem paradoxical given the systemic benefits and risks of the revived and now
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AI National Policies – II
As mentioned in the previous post, policymakers should skip over the dominant technology-centered AI perspective and instead position AI as a multi-dimensional structure cutting across all sectors. Indeed, national AI policy effectiveness depends to a large extent on the AI
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AI National Policies – I
National policy development on new digital technologies has become a staple since the emergence of the Internet in the early 1990s. It has certainly not been limited to most advanced countries. Nations in the Global South have also climbed the
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Contesting Innovation
Innovation is always good. Innovation regulation is always wrong. These are the two innovation axioms we repeatedly hear in unison from mainstream media, innovators and innovative companies, big and small. Indeed, the two are connected. They are, in fact, two
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AI Topography
For the last 30 years, the seemingly endless number of so-called technology revolutions invading our expansive yet decaying landscape has been accompanied by a proliferation of wide-ranging publications, usually playing catch-up while trying to predict the future on the spot.
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Waiting for yet another Industrial Revolution
The PC revolution. The Internet revolution. The mobile revolution. The social media revolution. The blockchain revolution. And the AI re-revolution. We seem to be living in times of Permanent Revolution. Also reminds me of the Age of Revolution that thrived
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Vaccine Inequality
Already under siege in many quarters, Globalization has now added the seemingly unstoppable spread of the Corona Virus to its already dubious credentials. As expected, not one single country has been spared, rich and poor suddenly standing on the same
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AI and Development Policies
Strongly supported by behemoth tech companies, the “ethical and responsible” AI discourse has almost completely overshadowed the relevant conversation on the potential socio-economic impact the resurgent technology might have in developing countries. While such discourse’s subtle agenda, apparently now failing,
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Better “AI for Good”
While the dystopian camp perceives digital technologies as a formidable, perhaps even unsurmountable threat to society, those on the other, much more optimistic side do not seem to get tired of repeating its almost countless benefits. The latter camp apparently
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Digital Government in Jamaica
The last time I visited Jamaica was in the early 2000s. A few years before, we had launched the national node of the old and now defunct Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP). It was labeled JSDNP and did quite a
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Evolving COVID-19
Over six months after its official birth, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to expand globally, as expected. Long-term lockdowns and other complementary measures have impacted, especially in industrialized countries that, back in June, were leading in cases and deaths. Not that
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Digital Government Revisited – III
Institutions matter, more so for the development and implementation of Digital Government (DG), whose core target is public institutions’ transformation. On the one hand, public institutions should have an array of capacities to ensure public investments in digital technologies are
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Digital Government Revisited – II
Since the early 1980s, Governments have taken a bad rap. Menacing fingerpointing from most quarters ended up on a consensus that loudly declared them personas non-gratas. The 2009 Global Financial Crisis started to turn the tide. At the time, governments
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Digital Government Revisited
Overview Running on the coattails of electronic commerce, Digital Government (DG) first saw the light of day over 20 years ago. Initially christen as electronic government or e-government, it has since experienced multiple name changes, ranging from e-governance and transformational
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Contentious Politics in the AI Age
Initially touted as revolutionary and progressive in the 1990s, the lightening evolution of digital technologies, running on the coattails of continuous innovation, has been accompanied by the rise of both extreme socio-economic inequalities and loud and widespread populism, nationalism and
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Covid19: A “Swedish” Model?
Having been trashed for the last forty years or so, Governments have unexpectedly taken back center stage thanks to the Covid19 pandemic. The virus does not need a passport to travel around the world, nor any tough immigration legislation has
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Deadly COVID19
Over a week ago, a mainstream media news outlet published an article (behind a paywall) suggesting that the disease caused by the SARS–CoV-2 virus, COVID19, was not as deadly as initially thought. The article cited the results of a non-peer
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Innovation in the Public Sector
I. Introduction For the last 30 years, relentless technological innovation has seemingly conquered most, if not all, corners of the world. While the focus was on infrastructure and social networks in its early stages, the latest phase has set its
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Natural Disasters and Carbon Concentration
In 1988, the Brussels-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) launched the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) with the idea of promoting national and international humanitarian support to countries and regions affected by such events. Having a structured
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Yet Another Global AI Index
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) seemingly continues to permeate all interstices of society, measuring its undaunted progress in the age of data is more than a priority. In a previous post, I share some insights on the Global AI Readiness Index
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The Development Onion
Governments in developing countries are just one of the many players involved in promoting sustainable development – in many cases, with direct support from bilateral and multilateral donor organizations. However, governments are, in principle, bound by the overall development commitments
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More CO2: Consumption-based Emissions
In a previous post, I explored the relationship between C02 emissions, country income levels and population looking at production data only. Here, emissions are assigned to the country where goods or services are produced or generated, disregarding final consumption. In
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Blockchains and Food Safety
Trade is one of the main trademarks of the globalization process. Nowadays, most countries exchange products and services regularly and use local comparative advantages to specialize in specific trade sectors and/or commodities. Food and agricultural products are important components of
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E-government Development II
In this sequel post, I will look at the various components of the UNDESA e-government index and then introduce the EIU democracy index to explore potential interlinks between the two, Components The e-government development index (EGDI) comprises three distinct components
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Waste no time waiting for e-Waste data
The town where I currently reside is planning to change its e-Waste collection policy starting next year. As it is today, town people can go downtown once a month and drop their old computers, laptops, monitors and the rest. This
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Have You Ever Seen a Blockchain?
A silent but intense competition seems to be taking place when it comes to defining blockchain technology. A Google search for the question “What is blockchain” yields over 120 million possible results. This number includes thousands of guides, videos, FAQs
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Case Study: WFP Building Blocks Jordan Refugee Pilot
[I wrote this edited draft case study for a larger blockchain research project led by The GovLab. The final project report included a shorter version of my draft.] 1. Overview Launched in January 2017, the World Food Program Building Blocks
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Democracy and Capitalism: Friends or Foes?
The post-WWII era can be arguably defined as the golden age of democratic capitalism – at least from the perspective of developed or industrialized countries. Rebuilding Europe and pumping capital into Japan triggered a long economic boom that lasted until
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