Doing AI Right in Africa This essay was first published at HAKI My first essay in this series argued that Africa’s position in the AI revolution is one that offers strategic choice. I posed that Africa’s lateness allows it to choose better, and that its diversity and polycentric structure can be deployed as leverage. All…
AI in Africa This essay was first published at HAKI. Conventional narratives position Africa as perpetually behind, always scrambling to catch up while real progress happens elsewhere. This framing is wrong. Africa’s position outside conventional currents of success need not always be a disadvantage. Sometimes, it is a strategic asset to be deployed. Africa is…
THE RECEIPTS When I started writing “IT’S A TRAP“, the Data Sharing Agreement had not yet been disclosed. I analysed The Framework in isolation, and reported the issues I found. These included jurisdictional limits in relying solely on the laws of Kenya, ethical issues around training AI models on sovereign data, the potential of permanent…
Read the sequel, THE RECEIPTS, here. 0. Priorities There is a woman who owns land down the road. It’s a modest parcel, inherited from her father. It is enough to sustain her children, enough to grow some grains when the rains come. But for the past few years, the rains have failed, and her granaries…
MACHINES HAVE JUST LEARNT HOW TO THINK The dance between what we can imagine and what is possible is a delicate one. Optimism, no matter how latent in logic, often finds itself wrapped in the shameful garments of hype. Grand ideas appear absurd when measured against what we believe. This is because we comfort ourselves…
IT was nothing. IT was everything. IT was nowhere and IT was everywhere. IT stretched from shore to horizon, from planet to heliosphere, and from every galaxy to the edge of the universe. Yet, it occupied no space at all. Many aeons ago, an ape-like creature that inhabited a pale planet in an old unremarkable…
[This piece was submitted to the Future of Life Institute as part of a global AI World Building competition. The full submission containing more material was selected among the top 20 finalists. If you are reading this before June 15 2022, like the finalist announcement on Twitter and send us your feedback via the main…