En Sovann, Director of Digital Government Transformation Department at Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, has raised concerns that the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) across Cambodia may lead to a loss of jobs as labor becomes automated.

He made the statement during a panel discussion organized by Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Cambodia. Thursday’s KAS Politics Talk, ‘AI: Shaping Governance and Democracy and the Role of AI in Combating Disinformation’ saw three guest speakers from the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and KAS’ country director discuss a range of AI-related topics.

AI replacing jobs

Sovann raised concerns that AI has the potential to replace labor jobs, while helping companies to save costs in some areas of work. He noted that strong forward planning is key to minimize any impacts.

“I believe that as long as the Government puts effort into thinking about these things and ensures that the profit and productivity that it gains is somehow distributed and provided to people who lose their jobs. This is going to make AI work to be beneficial to society as well,” he added.

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About two-thirds of employment are at "some degree" at risk of automation, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis in March. It suggested that AI may replace up to 25 percent of present work.

Koe Sothie, Secretary of State Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, emphasized that AI cannot replace human creativity as it follows the same patterns that exist in the data. Original creative ideas of human beings cannot be replicated by AI.

The Government’s digital policy framework is split into three phases. The first is to lay the foundations for digital gathering to steer the transformation. Sothie said AI has the potential to help this be achieved due to its data-driven approach to decision-making.

“I believe the more that we adopt it, the better the decisions we can make for the quality of life of citizens. We also take a people-centric approach because at the end of the day, the digital government transformation is not just to have a digital system, but to improve lives through digital,” he added.

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How AI can identify disinformation

Sovann also debated the role AI can play in stamping out disinformation on social media. It has the ability to detect and track millions of pieces of information that is impossible to be replicated at speed by humans.

“On social media, there is a lot of disinformation. With the rise of AI, people can use it to create facts. That being said, you cannot use human speed to follow them. A million articles are on social media at the same time and it's not possible to track them to see if they are correct. So, the only way is to use AI,” Sovann said.

Misinformation is false or misleading information that is unwittingly shared, while disinformation is deliberately created and distributed with an intent to deceive or harm. These cover a broad spectrum, from comedy and parody to harmful conspiracy ideas, according to a UNICEF publication.

How to analyze information using AI

Users can analyze information posted online by comparing it with databases that can be trusted to double-check whether it is true or false information.

“I write a post and post it on social media. I can analyze my post and see if it is true or not by referencing it to a trusted database. So, let's say the Government has the database, all of the information will be there. So, I just check against that. This can be easily done,” he explained.

However, this does not always work since information is fired at rapid speed in real time. At times, even trusted databases are incapable of keeping up.

Another method to analyze information is using sentiment analysis. This is the process of classifying whether a block of text is positive, negative, or neutral. The goal is to analyze people’s opinions. It focuses not only on polarity (positive, negative and neutral) but also on emotions (happy, sad, angry, etc).

It uses various Natural Language Processing algorithms, such as rule-based, automatic, and hybrid, according to a Geeks for Geeks’ publication.

“If you look at a specific topic to check the sentiment, if the sentiment changes very rapidly something is wrong. If it changes in a good way, then probably it is right. But if it changes to violence, you have to detect it,” the Director of Digital Government Transformation Department emphasized.

Nevertheless, AI also has a weak point in analyzing whether specific information is true or false as it uses machine learning to analyze information based mainly on data.

“AI is best at statistical machine learning, so it will fit to the general truth or general facts. But it cannot pick up a very simple, particular thing, or pick up whether this is true or not,” he added.

Obligations of social media platforms

Koe Sothie, Secretary of State Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, said currently Cambodia does not have any policies regarding determining fake news. However, he suggests imposing an obligation on social media to control the spread of misinformation.

“Right now, within the e-commerce law, they have intermediary exemptions. We want to keep this exemption to promote innovation, but when fake news gets to a level that it creates harm and risk to people's safety we should consider imposing more obligations for them to monitor such content,” Sothie said.

He noted that some countries are using technology to fight technology. For example, using AI to monitor fake news that rely on government open databases and data resources.

“I see that if people themselves were to use AI tools to figure out whether a post is fake or not, that requires digital literacy as well. This means that we have to put a lot of effort into making sure that people have a digital delivery and they know how to use those tools and such,” Sothie added.

He gave an example of Singapore, where social media users have to click on the link of an article before they share the content; otherwise, they are not able to share it on their feed.

Sothie said the biggest challenge is digital literacy among Cambodian citizens. “If they know how to use digital, they will be able to know the credibility of the source of the information,” he said.

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