My dear countrymen, it may not mean anything significant, but I am curious why President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly offering Elon Musk to handle both artificial intelligence (AI) and crypto currency in the next administration. The reports are sketchy, but Musk was also supposedly offered to run the proposed Dept. of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an offer that Musk will reportedly decline, because he would rather be a “volunteer IT consultant” himself. What these bits of information are telling us, is that AI, cryptocurrency and government efficiency are all in one loop, at least in the mind of incoming President Trump.
From what I hear, Musk is attributing government inefficiency to
outdated software that is being used in the government, an issue that no one
has dared to bring out in the Philippines. I wonder what Musk is alluding to?
Perhaps what he means is that the software of the US government is outdated
because it does not use AI, and it also does not yet honor cryptocurrency?
Although Musk was initially quoted as saying that it is the software of the US
government is outdated, he also said that in a separate quote that computers
themselves are also outdated.
In other words, he was referring to entire systems as being
outdated. While there is not enough information yet to make final conclusions,
I could guess from my own initial observations that Musk will replace the
antiquated ledgers of the US government with blockchain technology, in effect
using electronic ledgers instead, but with multiple copies, so to speak. I
wonder how Musk’s technology innovations to bring about government efficiency
will affect the practices of governance in the free world. I also wonder how
the Philippine government will catch up, considering that up to now, most national
government agencies (NGAs) and local government units (LGUs) do not even accept
personal checks yet, much less virtual money or bitcoins. As far as I know,
anything that is cloud based and browser based is not antiquated, but the
software running in the cloud could be antiquated.
Some years ago, browsers were used only for web apps, but
eventually they were also used for mobile apps. There used to be a distinction
between web apps that used browsers and mobile apps that were native to the
device, but now the distinctions were seemingly erased. Perhaps what Musk means
by antiquated is that American government services are not yet accessible via
mobile apps.
Here in the Philippines, President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. has
already set the standard that all government services must be available online,
and not only that, but they also must be interoperable. Since many NGAs and
LGUs have not yet met that standard, it could be said that all of those that
are below standard could be considered as antiquated. As defined by President
Marcos, Jr., all government services must be digitalized and not just “manual”,
so to speak.
Going back to the basics, there is a big difference between being
“computerized” and “digitalized”. As a matter of fact, a government service
could already be “computerized”, but it is not yet “digitalized”. For example,
a government office could install Microsoft Excel in a computer to produce
accounting spreadsheets, but that does not mean that they already have a
digitalized accounting system. And if they could not even accept online
payments and issue electronic receipts, that tells you a lot.
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