TLDR;
Tech Innovation holds immense importance for Bhutan, especially in transforming the governance, tourism and education where this sectors is crucial to drive bhutan economy. For meaningful progress, the government and private sectors must collaborate and actively embrace innovation through practical initiatives, such as proof of concept (POC) projects, rather than relying solely on rhetoric. By taking concrete steps today, Bhutan can set itself on a path to bridge the gap with the rest of the world.
Table of contents
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Introduction
Just 3 years ago, the AI revolution we’re witnessing today seemed like something straight out of movie scene. Machine learning was already gaining momentum when I just got into tech. I remember being amazed when I saw a post on LinkedIN where a random guy from India created a personalized AI chatbots. Those achievements felt groundbreaking at the time.
Now, in 2024, the landscape has transformed dramatically. What once took months of specialized development can be accomplished in minutes. Building an AI chatbot has become accessible to developers of all skill levels, thanks to powerful language models. Dev can now literally build ai chatbots in mins.
Rise of AI
I witnessed the rise of AI firsthand during my high school vacation in 2019. Since I had some free time, I use to make IG content on tech. IG was my main source of news, and around that time GPT just Launched it’s version 2.0, it was a bit of controversial topics but I didn’t care.I was excited by the tech. They were launching mvp after mvp, from code generation, to song generation with AI it was pretty bad but at that time, those innovation was fascinating to me.
As the years went on, I started noticing how quickly AI was becoming integrated into everyday tools. What once felt experimental began reshaping industries. I couldn’t help but imagine the possibilities—how AI might solve real-world problems or inspire creativity in ways we’d never considered. How can AI be used for Bhutan during this critical time of transformation.
Rise of AI
After the launch of GPT 3.0 in 2020, people like me and you started waking up to the fact that AI was going to have a huge impact. As someone who embraces the possibilities of this technology and building on top of this tech, I for a very long time I was puzzled by what AI truly means. I would wonder how I would define AI if I were to be ever stopped and asked what it means.
I think AI should best be understood as something like a new digital species. Now, don’t take this too literally, but I predict that we’ll come to see them as digital companions, new partners in the journeys of all our lives. For a start, they clearly aren’t biological in any traditional sense, but just pause for a moment and really think about what they already do. They communicate in our languages. They see what we see. They consume large amounts of information. They have memory. They have personality. They have creativity. They can even reason and formulate plans. They can act autonomously if we allow them. And they do all this at levels of sophistication that is far beyond anything that we’ve ever known from a mere tool. And so saying AI is mainly about the math or the code is like saying we humans are mainly about carbon and water. It’s true, but it completely misses the point.
AI got it’s importance in 2022, though from innovation perspectives 2 years seems like a lot of missed opportunities, I believe Bhutanese have the potential to catch up to the world and become a high tech society with the right mindset and opportunities.
AI For Bhutan 🇧🇹
At Jaggle.AI we are all about helping our small community realize the importance of AI and technology in general, in governance and companies. After talking with few governmental agencies, public sectors and companies within Bhutan, we realized that we are 20 years behind compared to UK. I was listening to a podcast where one of the guy was talking about how they were leveraging AI in government.
He was saying that 20 years back in law enforcement area, they had to do things manually by checking every documents and how it was a difficult processes with a lot of mis judgement. Recently while talking to government agencies we found out that they were doing things the same way, and it really got me thinking, Bhutan is 2 decades behind, I believe the change should come immediately.
Bhutan and Innovation
I respect Bhutan and the bold move that Bhutan is taking. We can see this steps in the challenges that Bhutan is willing to take. The first innovation we saw coming as a nation is the NDI. Most of us use NDI, and government is taking measure to educate the public on the importance of self sovereign Identity. Secondly GMC, initiative by his majesty which I am personally am very excited and looking forward for it to come alive.
This proves that Bhutan have leaders and it’s people that have the right mindset and talents to take Bhutan forward.
Use case of AI
In this presentation I will focus on one sectors of how we can leverage AI - How we can use AI for Law Enfrocement. Law enforcement serves as the cornerstone of a stable and secure society. In any community, it plays a vital role in maintaining social order by protecting citizens from crime, resolving conflicts, and ensuring accountability for criminal actions.
If people feel safer travelling at night, it’s because of the law enforcement. If people feel safe in their homes, it’s because of the law enforcement. If people feel safe in their workplace, it’s because of the law enforcement. This is the indication of a well-functioning justice system.
The main key take away During the 4th international conference on GNH and law, with the theme of “Criminal Justice and Happiness”, that was held in Paro, Bhutan from Nov 11-13, 2024 is as follows:
- Legal Expertise emphasized on the importance of strong justice system for achieving the goals of GNH.
- One main reason for criminal activities in Bhutan is due to lack of comprehensive and practical justice system.
- Legal Professionals in bhutan lack resources, technology and training material.
- call for increasing the public trust in the justice system as a means social stability.
By leveraging AI, Bhutan can use Ai to detect patterns of money laundering, image recognition to catch criminals and capture license plate, predective analysisi to prevent the crime from even happening. Those technology sounds fancy and hard to implement but since Bhutan is a small nation with only 800K population the level of complexity of this system is exponentially less and cheaper as compared to bigger nation and I think if we set our right mind we will be able to achieve far more systematic solution because of this advantage we have.
For example, If a responsible agencies is to auditing companies for potential money laundering, manually checking the transactions after transaction will take weeks and might miss out on obvious patterns. Using AI we can do significantly reduce the time and help catch patterns that might have been missed out
This technology will later on prove to be a strong tool for law enforcement and build public trust towards strong justice system, lawyers and law professional in Bhutan can leverage AI for their lack of resources and one day people will be able to walk more freely without fear of crime proving to be a strong tool for social stability.
Outtro
Here goes the outro …
Jigme Namgyal
Creator of Jaggle.AI