President William Ruto now says that his administration is already leveraging on Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide services to Kenyans.
Speaking when he met US tech giants on Monday, Ruto said that even as the state awaits for Parliament to pass the necessary legislation, it is already using AI to offer some services.
He said that already the distribution of the new university funding model uses AI to determine the amount one gets, as well as the financial status of the parents.
The President stated that it is also being used to distribute the government's subsidised fertiliser to farmers across the country.
Ruto further noted that his administration is also look at using Artificial Intelligence to determine beneficiaries of the Universal Health Coverage, through the newly introduced Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF).
"Parliament is now seized with the necessary legislation and guidelines that will support our AI journey. Already we are leveraging on AI to do our Means Testing Instrument for how we are distributing education money to beneficiaries so that we can use AI to get the algorithms that will give us what is the financial status of each parent.
"We are using the same desegregate how we distribute our fertiliser to farmers and we are now using it for the beneficiaries of our Universal Health Coverage. There are people who government has to pay for because they cannot afford and AI is helping us in that space," the President said.
Ruto, however, admitted that even as the country is adopting technology to ease service delivery, it has come with its own share of challenges.
He said that while AI is good, it has its negative side, which has become quite a mess.
"The challenge we have with AI is we have a lot of generative stuff; fake news, misinformation, disinformation some of it that people can hardly know what is true from what is not and it is quite a mess," Ruto said.
He added that another big challenge Kenya faces is Cybersecurity.
The President's remarks come a few days after he said disinformation and fake news should not rob us of the opportunity to leverage on opportunities technology has to offer.
Speaking at a Nairobi hotel on September 11, Ruto said he was working closely with Parliament to regulate fake news in the digital spaces.
He said Kenya was keen on creating jobs for its population using technology but it has come with many challenges.
“In our plan to deal with challenges that face our demographics that we have, one of the items we are working on is how we are going to use technology to create digital jobs," he said.
