Enhanced technology skills can ensure peace, says Aziz Ahmad

"We need to embrace all technology advancements with a clear understanding on digital good and digital bad and address the digital divide by reducing gaps in the society at large." 

Aziz Ahmad, a renowned technology innovator, entrepreneur, and speaker said on Thursday at a seminar on "Data Collection and Distribution Process as Enablers for the Exercise of Human Rights" held at United Nations Headquarters in New York oroganized by the UN University for Peace as a side event in observance of World Press Freedom Day 2023. 

Peace and prosperity can be ensured by enhancing the technology skills among the youths so that they can become the resources instead of becoming the burden of the society, Mr Ahmad underscored. 

The Bangladeshi- American technology investor, Chairman of CodersTrust and CEO of UTC Associates, Aziz Ahmad joined the discussion with Jayashri Wyatt, Chief of the Education Outreach Section, Outreach Division, Department of Global Communications, United Nations, Amy Larsen, Director, Strategy and Management at Democracy Forward, Microsoft, Dr. Chris Wiggins, Chief Data Scientist, NY Times and Professor at the Data Science Institute, Columbia University and Dr. Mona Sloane, Senior Research Scientist & Associate Professor, NYU Center for Responsible AI as the panelists.

Renowned UN diplomat and communication expert Ramu Damodaran moderated the seminar while Juan Carlos Sainz Borgo, Vice President of University for Peace was in the chair. 

Spread of hate speech, privacy violation in the name of technology advancement are happening, the speakers exphasized their concerns. 

"I think we should embrace the technology innovation over innovation but need to ensure a balance in terms of freedom of speech and access to information and see how we can come up with the policy to address the bad elements and bad actors like hackers, even the country sponsored hackers, in the arena of digital technology," Aziz Ahmad said in his discussion. 

In the wake of severe underemployment, unemployment across the Globe, Mr Ahmad founded CodersTrust to provide relevant skill sets amongst the the youths so that they can earn from the Global market from anywhere they live, he informed the seminar. 

The seminar lauded Aziz Ahmad for the incredible work of his organization, CodersTrust. 

Mr. Ahmad shared his experience as a Lead Architect of AT&T once for its 21st Century Network and said some of those technologies still remain while some are now gone from the face of the earth. Sixty five percent of today's elementary school goers, their skill sets, their jobs don't exist now. Forty five percent of our workforce today need to be re-skilled and up-skilled to stay relevant as a workforce. How we address that as a compliance we need to know and that will bring the peace and prosperity, Aziz Ahmad underscored. 

AI and automation are diversifying quickly, but billions of people still do not have the access, they are not generating any data, so how to make the approaches more inclusive embracing digital good and avoiding digital bad is a challange, he added. 

Hate speech or propaganda we can not limit but we can think about some kind of regulation over it by being careful about freedom of speech keeping digital good in consideration, said Aziz Ahmad. 

A very loose framework can be initiated where we can balance our innovations with ethics and compliance bringing rich and poor, men and women and different genders, our conscious, sub conscious thoughts to mitigate the challenges of uncertain future, Mr Ahmad suggested.