‘Get ahead’

An artificial technology advocate from one of Britain’s leading AI inclusion networks is advising Barbados and other small island states to establish a platform for high-technology development.
Margaret Colling, one of the 11 members of a People’s Panel to review the United Kingdom’s AI Safety Summit last October, told Barbados TODAY in an interview that it was important for small communities to play a role in the creation of AI as it will have an impact on small economies.
She said Barbados and other Small Island Developing States (SIDS) should set up citizen panels that advocate for people in the developing world where the disparities of the digital divide are more pronounced, adding that an official platform would enable small states to have some measure of influence in the global debate of AI inclusion and development.
Colling told Barbados TODAY: “We would not have had our voices heard had not Connected Data Ltd set up this People’s Panel. Otherwise, our voices won’t be heard. So I don’t know if you (SIDS) can get something similar in your communities. The whole concept of the panel, a citizen’s jury, a citizen’s assembly, call it whatever you want, it’s a collection of individuals who represent the wider community who are told the facts (about AI projects) and then asked their opinions about them. But as I say, you need a platform to speak from rather than just a lone voice crying in the wilderness. You need some structured organisation to do it for you so you can [represent SIDS] on the international stage.”
Colling gave a presentation at the AI UK 2024 data science exhibition which the Alan Turing Institute hosted. The exhibition was one of the activities organised by the British High Commission’s media tour, which involved three upcoming Barbadian journalists travelling to the UK for a one-week trip to London.
The advocate said the SIDS platform would be responsible for monitoring what advanced technologies were being developed and lobby to be a part of the project’s creation so the voices of small states could be heard. She said AI projects should be inclusive and citizen driven and the SIDS platform would hold companies accountable for creating technologies with the realities of small states in mind.
During the exhibition, officials representing global AI firms also spoke about how advanced technologies could improve the societies of SIDS in various ways.
In 2022, the Barbados Police Service started a joint venture with the Barbados Defence Force called Operation Restore Order, to address an upsurge in gun crime.
Anthony Dixon, head of data science at Wyser Ltd, which creates software tailored for armed forces, said AI could help police in crime detection and prevention programmes.
Wyser created a program to help identify hotspots, predict criminal incidents and crunch data to help fight crime.
Dixon said: “If you want to prevent crime, you need to know how the crime is being committed and where it’s going to be committed and what this allows you to do is to have the practitioners have really good access to the data. So we make it easier for the practitioners to get the data they need in order to put forward crime prevention strategies at all levels. That might be down to the local level (community level) or at the national level.
“Typically, what we find is that police forces have all of the information but they find it really difficult to [analyse it effectively]. What this allows them to do is more easily get the information that they need to fight that crime such as gang-related crimes, where they have happened and the probability that another crime is going to happen.”
Regarding protecting small states’ biodiversity, Tom August, a computational ecologist for the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, said that AI could help political leaders shape policies based on scientific research.
August said leaders can implement certain programmes that protect the environment while simultaneously addressing issues certain sectors may face.
As it relates to agriculture, he said that there were natural pest control agents that could be introduced on farms so farmers could reduce the use of harmful pesticides.
He said the centre was developing a mobile phone application “to allow farmers to identify beetles in their fields and understand the extent of the natural pest control they have in their fields”.
August added: “We hope that by informing them in this way, it will help them to understand when they need to use pesticides and when they don’t. If you’re seeing hundreds of ladybirds on your crops, then perhaps you don’t have to spray for aphids because you’ve got a really good kind of natural pest control service there.”
He said AI could also help small states with limited resources to carry out crucial research.
“Technology can really help when person-power is limited,” August said. “If you think about small states, the person-power needed to go out and do all these surveys on farms or in nature reserves can be constraining. If you put out a network of sensors it obviously increases your spatial coverage. You’ll still need expertise to quality control the data and you still need to be able to go and put the tech out, but it can really increase that volume of data that you’re getting, and it can give a more complete picture of what’s going on in biodiversity. This is crucial because you may record lots of information and you will be able to analyse all that data from the network sensors.”