Latest news with #ColinThakur
IOL News
5 days ago
- Business
- IOL News
Should banks host the ballot? The democratic dilemma of ATM and app-based e-voting
ATMs and apps, unlike supervised polling booths, are uncontrolled environments. A voter could be coerced, or even incentivized to cast their ballot a certain way. Image: Supplied Prof Colin Thakur On 22 May 2024, at a joint IEC-UNISA engagement hosted at the UNISA Durban campus, I had the privilege of presenting my research on electronic voting (e-voting) in South Africa. The audience - comprising about 200 participants from academia, civil society, and industry - grappled with the future of elections in a digital democracy. Core concerns included the digital divide, inadequate voter education, and the technical infrastructure required to support secure and inclusive e-voting. Amid this robust debate, one audience member posed an intriguing question: Why not piggyback on banking apps or ATMs to collect votes securely? The suggestion - lateral and bold - demands thoughtful consideration, as it taps into the increasing appetite for leveraging familiar, trusted technologies to solve public challenges. We must have clear credible reasons for any decision choice. Interestingly, this ATM idea is not new. I explored similar terrain in my 2010 research report commissioned by the IEC, titled The X-National Experience. At the time, the national ATM footprint stood at 19,996, growing steadily to peak at 33 025 in 2019, before declining to around 28 467 today. This figure compares favourably to the 23 293 voting stations currently deployed during national elections. Yet this superficial alignment masks deeper issues. ATMs are not evenly distributed across human settlements. They are purposefully deployed in areas of high financial activity, often excluding rural and underserved communities. Unlike voting stations, they were never intended to ensure geographic electoral accessibility. This misalignment raises a critical democratic concern: how would such a model serve the unbanked, the rural, the digitally excluded? Moreover, the proposition of using banking apps or ATMs for voting introduces complex risks of outsourcing democracy to private institutions. While banks are generally trusted to secure financial transactions, elections are not just about data integrity - they're about public trust, transparency, and universal enfranchisement. Delegating the core mechanics of voting to corporations - however competent - alters the fundamental relationship between the state and its citizens. There are technical and ethical complications as well. ATMs and apps, unlike supervised polling booths, are uncontrolled environments. A voter could be coerced, or even incentivized to cast their ballot a certain way. The latter is called vote selling. This violates the secrecy of the vote, a cornerstone of legitimate democratic elections. Let us also not forget that while banks can afford a statistical margin of error in the form of a few lost rands across millions of transactions. This, while unpleasant is acceptable as a business risk. This is not the case in an elections. A single compromised ballot is a red flag for legitimacy and can, in some cases, could invalidate entire portions of an elections. Do also note the shrinking ATM footprint in South Africa. Banks are now closing ATMs due to three reasons: The first is Digital migration where more customers use online/mobile platforms. The second is operational costs and security risks with ATMs prone to vandalism, fraud, and cash transit costs particularly in remote areas. Finally new digital-first banks like TymeBank now use retail partnerships to offer cash access without traditional ATM infrastructure. This erosion of physical banking infrastructure further undermines the feasibility of ATM-based voting. Finally ATM or app voting is a form of remote voting also called Internet Voting is arguably the most contentious form of ballot capture. David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University, argues that internet voting poses significant risks to election integrity, stating that "from the perspective of election trustworthiness, Internet voting is a complete disaster." This sentiment reflects broader concerns that the complexities and vulnerabilities inherent in digital platforms may not be adequately addressed when repurposing systems designed for banking to handle electoral functions.
IOL News
26-04-2025
- Business
- IOL News
Harnessing South Africa's AI investments for a skills revolution
By Professor Colin Thakur On 15 April 2025, history quietly turned a corner in Cape Town. Premier Alan Winde convened the first-ever Premier's Council on Skills (PCS) at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Skills Centre. This wasn't just another roundtable - it was a full-fledged strategic intervention. The Premier, his entire cabinet, academic leaders, and tech giants gathered with one goal in mind: to understand and respond to the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on work and skills development. UNISA was a proud partner in this groundbreaking event. Senior academic voices included Prof. Mamba, Executive Dean of UNISA; the Principals of West Coast College Lungisa Mbulawa, Boland College Charles Goodwin, and False Bay College Shalen Matthews; as well as Prof. Eugene Cloete, CEO of the Cape Higher Education Consortium (CHEC). Industry was represented by major players, including AWS and Microsoft. The exceptional Melissa Parker orchestrated the day's flow, and the formidable Naz Ebrahim - named one of the Top 100 Brilliant Women in AI - chaired the opening session with characteristic brilliance. As part of the programme, I had the privilege of delivering a 15-minute presentation that addressed a looming but largely unspoken opportunity. I highlighted the AI hat-trick no one seems to be talking about. In the span of a single month, three exponential technology investments were announced in South Africa: 1. Microsoft's R4.5 billion expansion of high-performance data centres in Johannesburg; 2. Google's R2.5 bn cloud infrastructure build; and 3. The establishment of Africa's first AI Factory by NVIDIA and Cassava Technologies. Each of these investments is transformative on its own, but viewed collectively, they represent an unprecedented alignment of infrastructure, computational power, and opportunity. For the first time, South African academics and innovators will have access to world-class computational resources. But here's the rub: no one is treating these three investments as a singular, strategic national opportunity. UNISA must help shift this narrative. The real disruption is already here. We often speak of AI as something just over the horizon. It's not. It's already reshaping the world of work. Previous industrial revolutions disrupted manual labour. This one - the Fourth Industrial Revolution - is disrupting white-collar professions. An estimated 800 million jobs are at risk. But this shift isn't just about job losses; it's about how the tasks within those jobs are being transformed. Every occupation is essentially a bundle of tasks, varying in complexity, duration, and repetition. In the past, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) could handle simple, rule-based work. Now, AI agents are automating complex tasks of up to two hours long - with 50% accuracy. Every seven months, the length of tasks that AI can automate is doubling. And both task length and accuracy are improving exponentially. As AI becomes better at handling longer and more complex tasks, the implications for workers, educators, and policy makers become profound. Here's the paradox: to train future researchers, data scientists, and cybersecurity experts, we need high-performance computing and vast data storage. Historically, South Africa has been constrained by a lack of computational power. That constraint has now been lifted. These three major tech investments lay the foundation for a very different future. But infrastructure alone is not enough. We must align our education systems, skills programmes, and policy responses to keep pace with technological change. Prof. Mamba was characteristically erudite when he offered a pointed, powerful remark: 'An exponential response is non-negotiable. If we fail to leverage these investment opportunities to upskill our nation, then we fail South Africa.' Premier Winde echoed this sense of urgency in his keynote address: 'There is no denying AI is here to stay… We must strike a balance - utilising AI's benefits while remaining vigilant about its risks. But we cannot wait for the future - we must create it.' AWS's Dr. Shivagami Gugan captured it succinctly in just three words: 'Fail forward, quickly.' And Naz Ebrahim left us with this lasting insight: 'We need purposeful reskilling. Skilling on its own just won't do it.' We cannot afford to let this moment pass us by. We must integrate, elevate, and innovate. These exponential tech investments are not just about infrastructure - they're about building capacity and advancing research. South Africa now has the tools. The real question is - do we have the collective will? UNISA is committed to supporting an elevated response in partnership with the Western Cape. Together, we will build agile curricula, forge public-private-academic alliances, and ensure the exponential future is inclusive. We don't just want to witness the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We want to shape it. *Thakur is a Distinguished Professor in 4IR and Digitalisation at UNISA. He writes in his personal capacity.
