AI as a corruption ‘tool’ (1)

GENERAL SANTOS CITY — The word corruption is heard quite often, even among ordinary citizens complaining about the inadequacy of basic social services and associating it as the main reason why such services are wanting in most local government units. However, it is usually associated with dishonesty and abuse of power for private gain, as exemplified in accepting bribe money to grant favors to someone who needs to have important papers processed quickly or to cut corners, as it is quite popularly referred to. This is typically demonstrated when a traffic police officer accepts some amount of money from a motorist caught violating traffic rules, like running a red light, for example.

In high political places, corruption is seen in huge favors granted to business entrepreneurs who donated enormous amounts of money to help a candidate win a top political position. The former usually do it to ensure their business enterprises will be granted huge government construction projects or business contracts in negotiated bidding procedures.

This practice has become so common that it no longer raises eyebrows among ordinary citizens. They all know that in this country, rent-seeking among those who occupy positions of tremendous political power is, quite pathetically, a value, however flawed, and it has been sustained over the years.

Some business tycoons get favors from the ruling president and his administration since they helped the former candidate with their donation of huge campaign funds. More likely than not, these donors become part of the newly elected president’s Cabinet or his circle of close aides and advisers—even when they are hardly qualified to be occupying powerful Cabinet-level positions.

But acts of corruption are not limited to the exchange of pecuniary and political favors. In this age of highly advanced technological development, something more insidious is creeping up as manifestations of flawed “standard operating procedures” in many government offices. And this is the frequent dependence on artificial intelligence (AI) platforms — ChatGPT being one of them — to accomplish important local government documents, including local development plans. Local government functionaries, many of whom are quite unfamiliar with the intricacies of technical writing, or even of ordinary report writing, resort to AI platforms to get things done, given the pressure of producing something within a set deadline. Expectedly, this is done through the hiring of local “technical consultants” who are just a few pages ahead of the local government functionaries in terms of their skills in technical and business writing.

AI is not by itself a “corrupt” tool. It carries no specific cultural value, except perhaps for its ability to facilitate the processing of a significant set of data that no individual may be able to do manually through ordinary computer applications software. But this is where the problem lies. Since it is just a tool, it could be used for various purposes, even for nefarious ones, like the use of drone computers to identify civilian targets in an unjust war, like what is happening in Gaza until now. The Israeli Defense Forces have used it countless times in the current daily bombardment of civilian residences, hospitals, and even schools in the Gaza Strip.

But it can also be used for difficult medical procedures like identifying the specific locations of tumors and other abnormal pathological growths in a person’s body, especially in delicate locations like the brain. In this way, AI procedures could reduce the possibility of operating on the wrong locations of certain tumors, and medical practitioners to avoid possible future cases of alleged medical malpractice, as what has happened in the past when AI was still considered science fiction.

Even the academe—the hallowed halls of learning via meticulous, arduous, and rigorous research procedures—is no longer that hallowed, considering what I am seeing and hearing among many academic communities, both here in my city and elsewhere. I am informed that some unscrupulous academics have resorted to the AI ChatGPT platform for their graduate papers, leading to their completion of an advanced degree document, like a dissertation, within less than a year!

The current generation (Gen Z) of students are generally quite indolent, relying mostly on their gadgets to get the facts about a place or a procedure, and even relying on the calculator functions of their phones to compute small amounts like adding petty costs of meals up to a measly P100 or even less. Before, students were taught “mental mathematics” and to memorize multiplication tables, making them able to do mental computations of petty amounts quite quickly and easily without using a gadget.

(More next week)

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