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Sample Press Release #5 of Kathleen Madrid del Rosario Manuel 12.12 AM 09/08/2022 The pandemic that is COVID-19 caused an increase in the financial inclusion of adults around the globe, as well as an increase in adults making and receiving digital payments worldwide, especially in the developing countries. Source(s): https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/06/29/covid-19-drives-global-surge-in-use-of-digital-payments https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/globalfindex?cid=ECR_TT_worldbank_EN_EXT ------------------------------- COVID-19 spurned an increase in financial inclusion of adults worldwide, according to World Bank Global Findex Database According to the Global Findex Database, as of 2021, 76% of adults worldwide now have an account at a bank, a financial institution or a mobile money provider. This figure saw an increase from 68% in 2017 and 51% in 2011. From the survey, two-thirds of adults around the globe now make or receive a digital payment. Receiving digital payments include receiving wage payment, a government transfer, a domestic remittance or a payment from a sale often leads to the use of other financial services such as saving or borrowing or storing money. One reason for this increase in the use of financial services is the COVID-19 pandemic which changed the way transactions are conducted, especially when social distancing is required and when people were told to stay home. The Global Findex results also show that COVID-19 has increased the adoption of digital financial services by adults worldwide. Forty percent (40%) of developing economies excluding China made a digital payment using a credit or debit card, their cellular phone or over the internet. One-third of adults in developing economies who paid a utility bill from their account did so for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The digital revolution has catalyzed increases in the access and use of financial services across the world, transforming ways in which people make and receive payments, borrow, and save,” said World Bank Group President David Malpass. It could be said that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about an increase in financial inclusion as shown by the increase in adults globally who have an account. This increase in financial inclusion caused an increase in digital payments made and received. Digital payments show an expansion worldwide of formal financial services that created new opportunities which was shown in the increase in account ownership of adults, including women who are now able to take care of their money with easier access and in a safer way. From worldbank.org: “Financial inclusion means that individuals and businesses have access to useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs – transactions, payments, savings, credit and insurance – delivered in a responsible and sustainable way.” Financial inclusion is important in development. Mobile money has been an enabler in financial inclusion, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa --- and especially for women --- and caused an increase in account ownership and account usage through mobile payment transfers, and saving and borrowing of money. Regions surveyed included East Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Carribean, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The Global Findex Database, which surveyed how people in 123 economies use financial services throughout 2021, is produced by the World Bank every three years in collaboration with Gallup, Inc. The Global Findex Database, launched in 2011 by the World Bank, allows users to compare access to financial services worldwide among adults. The results could be by gender, age and household income.

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My name is Kathleen and some of the jobs I held were as Communications Specialist and Business Reporter. I am a homeschooling mother now.

I was inspired to research and write this article after reading Tom Taulli’s article, “Facial recognition bans: what do they mean for AI (Artificial Intelligence) in Forbes.com. Here is his article:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2020/06/13/facial-recognition-bans-what-do-they-mean-for-ai-artificial-intelligence/?sh=1ea18c6a46ee

 

The New Buzzword is Artificial Intelligence

By Kathleen Madrid del Rosario Manuel

Metro Manila, March 5 2021

Machines should only do what humans cannot. --- Jack Ma

In an article, Alibaba founder Jack Ma: ‘AI will cause more people pain than happiness’

Machines, because of machine learning, and human data scientists who have found a way to aggregate and sift through myriad of data, have brought about a point of view that says machines will automatically replace some humans in jobs.

The human spirit and endurance has been such that spacecraft have astronauts and oil rigs are manned by engineers. The loneliest job in the world, according to an article by Kristina Rudic in vault.com, entitled World’s Loneliest Job, is a fire lookout at Gila National Forest. Gila National Forest, located in New Mexico and a lookout is supposed to warn about fire that may start and consume the forest. Months on end, the looker will be by himself, a pair of binoculars for his companion in his work.

We marvel at the tests of limits and endurance people could take. Loneliness is seen from the outside, with people noticing who they think is lonely when what they really see is a human used to little or no human contact and quite accustomed to it.

That is what the pandemic COVID-19 served to reinterate. That human life is fragile and should matter, whether lonely, alone or not. Here we see how artificial intelligence could make even more people lonely and detached.

What about artificial intelligence and how it is laying claim to the future? AI, hand in hand with machine learning, are producing computers, equipment and robots whom they say will take over our jobs and do our work for us.

The cost of AI has caused a shift in resource management and maximization for companies, both those big companies and medium to small corporations, who now must get data scientists and software and hardware specialists who will feed them dashboard metrics which will supposedly increase productivity, sales, level operations and make their employees, clients, customers and management prepared for the new future (with AI versus a pre-AI future).

I have read articles about the doomsday scenario robots and artificial intelligence will cause to the world population. I get a bit apprehensive everytime, being a mother of children below 18, and aspiring to go back to the workforce and thinking if a self-driving car will make it in the streets of Metro Manila.

I think AI use should be used in three main things. One, is is to increase food security hand-in-hand with the farmers and fishermen and traders, to the supermarkets, stores and restaurants. Two, AI can be used to assist humans, not replace them, their life, their raison d’etre and their work, job, livelihood or business. Three, artificial intelligence has use in cybersecurity.

Artificial intelligence should be there to make us feel secure, not whittle or whitewash us out.

There must be a way for AI to come up with ideas the promote food and job security and decrease the risk of cyberspace attacks on our website real estate.

This idea is to promote robots working for, and alongside humans, instead of being a threat to both job and peace of mind.

Robots are there to assist and not challenge or else there will be selectivity in all aspects. Considering the limitations of neural networks and considering the breakdown of machines and thus constant upkeep, what will happen is we will keep using AI and machine learning in industries and occupations which we no longer want to handle or thrive, or give to the Third-world economies to do as outsourced work.  

It is an idea that AI and machine learning will create a hegemony of work culture, that we get to select which jobs should be peak and increasing in number. Corollarily, that AI and machine learning gets to choose which jobs to render extinct or useless., through robots or machines or programs.

This should not be the case. The selectivity must be such that artificial intelligence should be used to select which industries and professions to favor and make more productive, not curry to or banish.

If we are not careful, what will be left are designers and developers of software, hardware and programs for the robots that increase farm productivity instead of the very humans and institutions they are trying to replace. We will be left with Salesforce engineers and experts and no longer be with the sales personnel who are responsible for doing business and territorial development and expansion or product designers who see how humans actually use and re-use their products and services.

If we do not have AI and machine learning regulations, what we will have a surplus of are data scientists whose predicative ability lies only within the data that was gathered and encoded by humans themselves, the very thing they are trying to replace with the machines they are designing and machine and robot creators and maintenance personnel.

The threat is to remove frontliners and for self-driving cars, the drivers themselves. You go visit a website and what will talk with you are chatbots who seem artificial even though they are intelligent (“Thank you for choosing tulle in white. The feel of tulle is soft and fairy-like.”) Cars may be invented that deliver what you ordered although cannot control when the human steps on something slippery and bashes his head on the car-deliveryman. Human interaction is what is being humanly interrupted.

Although they say that in as little as thirty years, many of the scenarios, actual and imaginable, will have been thought of by data scientists and mined for data, programmed by their AI software engineers and maintained by their AI hardware engineers, one misses the point exactly by going full force with artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Big data, big tech and data science misses the big picture for two reasons. One cannot see and encapsulate all the possible scenarios, including the effects of the emotions and thought processes that come into why humans do something. A machine, though without feeling, is ultimately not afraid or sad but is quite used to being what it is, an object we take pains turning into a pedigreed object that must be maintained.

Data science, data encryption, data encoding and data gathering will be the most sought after jobs as we set to encode and enter data that will be examined, studied and analyzed, for past information, a predictable present and a hoped for future with management-set objectives. This spells a foreboding because jobs will be skewed towards serving the pedigreed objects that are programs and robots, they that are dashboard and metrics sources, and computing jobs.

Another reason big data, data science and big tech do not see is that human explanation separates hard science into soft science. AI cannot begin to figure out why and how humans will do something (like they have come up with AI, machine learning, robots and neural network programming), just that they do.

There will be no rise of the machines but always, a selectivity, on what machines will rise, what industries artificial intelligence could be useful for, and who will be on the receiving end, job-wise and life-wise.

None the wiser, the new buzzword is artificial intelligence but just how intelligent these machines, robots and software and programs are still depends on a human. We must be careful about the rise of these machines because we still need humans for these machines’ upkeep. Enough with the statement the simplistic machines will replace humans and more of using AI and machine learning for the majority and common good.

References:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/24/alibaba-jack-ma-artificial-intelligence-more-pain-than-happiness

https://www.vault.com/blogs/job-search/the-worlds-loneliest-job

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