Show Us the Results: AI Surveillance Means Nothing Without Accountability

Dear Editor, 

If the government’s new enforcement architecture is truly powered by artificial intelligence—capable of real-time detection, automated flagging, and instant database integration—then a six-month delay in notifying 1,600 flagged drivers is not just puzzling; it is indefensible.

Artificial intelligence, by its very design, compresses time. It eliminates human lag, reduces discretion, and accelerates decision-making. 

We are told that this system can scan vehicles in motion, identify offenders instantly, and even trigger enforcement responses on the spot. 

Yet, when it comes to something as basic as issuing notification letters to suspected violators, the process has dragged on for months. That contradiction demands explanation.

The public is being asked to accept two competing narratives: one of cutting-edge efficiency, and another of bureaucratic inertia. Both cannot be true at the same time.

If the delay is administrative, then it exposes a glaring weakness in the very system being touted as transformative. What good is AI-driven detection if enforcement remains hostage to sluggish, opaque processes? Technology cannot be used as a public relations shield while old inefficiencies persist behind the curtain.

More troubling, however, are the growing whispers that the delay was not merely technical, but deliberate—that the list of flagged individuals required “scrubbing” to protect certain well-connected persons. Whether substantiated or not, such perceptions are corrosive. 

They strike at the heart of public trust and reinforce a long-standing belief that enforcement in Guyana is selective, not impartial.

This is precisely where the government’s narrative begins to unravel. AI systems are promoted as neutral arbiters—immune to bias, immune to influence. But if human intervention is quietly reintroduced after the fact, particularly to filter outcomes, then the integrity of the entire system collapses. What remains is not artificial intelligence, but artificial fairness.

The administration cannot have it both ways. It cannot claim technological objectivity while presiding over processes that appear negotiable. If AI is being deployed, then its outputs must be acted upon transparently, consistently, and without fear or favour.

The six-month silence raises fundamental questions:

Why were these drivers not notified immediately?

Who had access to the flagged data during this period?

What safeguards exist to prevent interference or manipulation?

Until those questions are answered, the rollout of AI-powered enforcement will be viewed not as progress, but as performance.

Guyana does not need smarter systems if they are embedded in the same old culture of discretion and delay. It needs credible enforcement—where the rules apply equally, the timelines are consistent, and the technology serves justice, not convenience.

Anything less is not modernization. It is merely digitized inequality.

Sincerely 

Hemdutt Kumar