Vice President of IMANI-Ghana Selorm Branttie has urged government to redesign government systems and structures to maximise the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Citing an IMF index report on country preparedness for AI, he noted that Ghana falls in the lower third quadrant of the index showing our gross unpreparedness for the advancement of artificial intelligence.

He stated that government’s persistence on introducing human elements even in the presence of automated machines boils down to procurement benefits and not efficiency.

“For example, in the service industry in areas where you’ll just need to run simple services we have overemphasised the human elements just because we like those inefficiencies to exist in order that we gain or some certain parties gain, and if these things are not done in the name of efficiency rather than in the name of procurement benefits,” he said.

Speaking on the Joy Super Morning Show, he urged government to lead the charge in incorporating AI into government structures to enhance efficiency.

“Now when it comes to AI we are at a point where there’s a turning point, we’re at a very critical tipping point where if we decide to really begin to use some of those systems and have a deliberate approach to it, it could dramatically change our environment.

“The IMF report that Winston and you guys talked about earlier this morning actually shows of [inaudible] Ghana in the lower income category where our preparedness for Ai is much on the lower side. In an index of 125 countries, we are in the lower quadrant or the lower third or so, so we’re not at the point where our systems are being designed to maximize the use of Ai as it should,” he said.

He noted that currently most AI technology is made by and for a western audience hence the need for the country and the continent at large to build local data sets to feed into AI models.

“The issues here, or the issues for us in Ghana and Africa is that one, we’re not building enough data sets to feed into AI models to generate the things that are relevant to our environment.

“So even now if you look at a lot of these AI systems, they’re more attuned to what will be culturally or informationally represent the West’s outlook on things or an American or European outlook on things.

“And you’d find very little nuance on African views or how we think or how we process our thoughts, our language, our culture, etc. and beyond that we have to look at it in many ways,” he said.