The Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) recalled this Wednesday that the deadline to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals is running out when the world is still a long way from meeting them.
In a speech before the Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Trade and the Digital Economy, Rebeca Grynspan stated that Data-driven digital technologies are an important tool to help advance the 2030 Agenda.
But for that, urgent and collective action is needed, he said, adding that such technologies can be “a source of hope if we can take advantage of them to close and not widen inequalities”.
In his opinion, the countries that will succeed in the 21st century are not the ones that are big, nor the ones that are rich, but the ones that are fast.
Grynspan noted that the global number of internet users totals 5.3 billion today and mobile broadband subscriptions are nearly 7 billion, adding that the world has shifted from sharing digital data over text to images and videos.
He also estimated that with the expansion of 5G, the growing number of internet devices and the increased use of artificial intelligence, data flows will expand faster.
Artificial intelligence
Elaborating on artificial intelligence, he cited ChatGPT, which “has taken the world by storm since December”, noting that in just six months, artificial intelligence it is revolutionizing education, labor markets and even art.
Despite this great revolution, he gave credence to the concerns of many experts in technology and human rights, about the evolution “too fast” of artificial intelligence and the threats of bias and inclusion, global peace and security that it implies and that “we must take very seriously”.
In terms of sustainable development, he considered that the technologies are available to save the 2030 Agenda, but that these are not accessible, especially where they are most neededthat is, in the countries of the Global South.
uneven connection
He explained that close to 60% of the world is connected to the Internet, but that only 20% of the population of the least developed countries is part of that group.
“While in some countries 80% of Internet users buy online, in many developing countries this figure is less than 10%,” he lamented, and clarified that within the countries there are significant divisions between rural and urban areas, and between men and women.
Grynspan stressed that data is deepening digital divides existing ones and argued that these divisions are starker in terms of who can benefit from the data-driven digital economy.
Concentration of digital technology
He alluded to cases of United States and China, which together account for half of the data centers hyperscale in the world, plus they have the highest 5G usage rates, 94% of total AI funding, 70% of top AI researchers, and 90% of AI market capitalization. major digital platforms.
At this point, he specified that raw data is meaningless unless it is aggregated and processed into digital intelligence to be used for commercial or social purposes and that this process is reciprocal: there can be no digital intelligence without data.
For the same reason, he pointed out to drive development, value must be added to the data.
He argued that in recent years some countries have tested the concept of accelerated development through digital technologies based on data and cited the case of India, which has been able to formalize its economy using these tools to attract some nine million new taxpayers in five years.
Grynspan insisted that for data to serve the 2030 Agenda, innovative thinking is necessary to enable a more effective policy making, with the participation of all stakeholdersboth nationally and internationally, and called for multiplying the potential of data-driven digital development with effective digital governance.
All this, he stressed, must be done through international cooperation and on the principles of the UN initiatives, which advocate the multilateralism and multisectoral alliances.
“This is essential to promote the responsible and ethical use of digital technologiesprotect individual rights and ensure that the benefits of digitization are accessible to all”, he emphasized.
