Tayebwa calls for law on Artificial Intelligence

Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Mr Thomas Tayebwa, has called for an update in laws on data and privacy to keep up with the advance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and possible threats associated with it.  

“These are laws which we made when the era of Artificial Intelligence had not reached the level it is at today. The capacity of AI to harvest, process and exploit data is so huge that it has rendered our laws ineffective,” Parliament quoted Mr Tayebwa.

He was speaking at the 2024 Data Privacy Day Conference held in Kampala on Wednesday.

Artificial Intelligence is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.

These are systems with characteristics of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalise, or learn from past experience, and are taking over in performing tasks hitherto reserved for humans.

Its advantages and convenience aside, there are also multiple concerns and ethical dilemmas including the possibility of structural biases.

Uganda in 2019 enacted the Data Protection and Privacy Act that aims to protect the privacy of individuals by regulating the collection and processing of personal information.

In updating the legislation to include AI, Tayebwa hopes for some form of oversight.  

He urged the Personal Data Protection Office to analyse the existing law and make recommendations to the Minister for ICT and National Guidance on amendments to bring it in line with technologies of the fourth industrial revolution.

“What is very clear is that in terms of legislation, we shall not be able to keep up with the speed of the internet and AI, but we should try. And maybe, the minister can be given more powers under regulation, so that he handles some of these matters without coming to Parliament,” Mr Tayebwa said

The Deputy Speaker further emphasised the need for more efforts to guard Ugandans against digital threats of misinformation and commercial espionage, among others.

Speaking at the same event, the Minister for ICT, Dr Chris Baryomunsi assured Ugandans that personal data collected by the government shall be protected and used only for official and beneficial reasons.

He said the ministry has implemented efforts to address duplication of biodata by providing funds to National Information Registration Authority (NIRA) to carry out mass registration of Ugandans.

“New registration of all to issue new or updated National Identification Cards is expected to start later in the year,” Byaromunsi said.

“NIRA is now procuring kits and the necessary devices and if their roadmap continues as scheduled, they should be able to get into that exercise mid this year,” he said.

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