WE are so terribly in the grip of technology, in particular information technology, that it is hard for the nation to back out.
It is too late.
From those in government to those in business and the toddler learning to walk, everybody craves technology.
And they will never have enough of it.
Nobody seems too concerned that this might not end up well for us; that this is slavery with a different name.
But it is slavery.
Children would rather play minecraft than go to school.
Ministers would rather expand the internet access, than access for the majority rural population to physical markets for their goods.
And that rural sector also craves the technology that is available to the townite, puts ever more pressure on rural to urban migration.
Here is where it gets dangerous, especially for a country like PNG.
Playing with electricity, the untrained can get electrocuted.
Playing with the internet, the untrained and ignorant can expose more than they should and get an unwelcome kickback.
With the advent of artificial intelligence, it will not be long before pornographic images of important persons in government and business appear in the public domain.
Because much of the population is illiterate and ignorant, they take as gospel truth what they see on the screen of a smart phone such as angels flying over Jerusalem or Jesus fighting Satan in a duel or a minister stark naked in bed with a ravishing beauty.
Shortly identifies will be stolen and people will masquerade as other individuals everywhere and monies in the bank will be taken out in illicit transfers that look, for all intent and purpose, as if they are genuine withdrawals.
They will be hard to trace.
Decision makers are losing sight of what are the real priorities are. They seem unaware that the unbanked population is increasing in droves; that those unbanked are also kept outside of electronic systems such as airline ticketing and shopping lanes at grocery stores.
That majority are now hungry, without jobs, are increasingly getting sick and mostly uneducated.
They will soon run riot and nothing will stop them.
Today, top bankers across the globe are gripped by fear regarding Mythos, the latest AI model from tech company Anthropic.
This model is so proficient at identifying security flaws in electronic systems that its makers have stopped public release until safeguards in place.
On April 7, Anthropic revealed that the model is so powerful that it is too dangerous to release to the public.
Anthropic initially granted access only to a select group of American entities, among them tech giants such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon, major cybersecurity firms, and the bank JPMorgan Chase.
These companies are reportedly using the Mythos system to test their own systems for vulnerabilities.
Mythos identifies unknown leaks in computer systems at lightning speed. While this might be a blessing for those looking to secure their systems, think about when that lands in the hands of hackers.
It would be a weapon against which all systems would lie open and vulnerable, including in PNG.
Think about what happened when the BSP system suffered significant glitches when it was updating its computer system or when the Finance Department system was hacked.
A minor glitch in one government pay run led to the January 10 or Black Wednesday riots of 2024.
Billions of kina worth of property was destroyed and many lives lost.
Think about when all the banks fall prey to an unscrupulous hacker armed with sophisticated systems like Mythos in their hands.
“If it falls into the wrong hands, it could end very badly,” warned Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, in an interview with The Guardian.
It seems preposterous that our leadership is all hell bent on driving down the information technology highway, nobody is standing back to see what impact this could have for Papua New Guinea in the short to medium term.
