Today we’re talking about two things to know about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in international development. Yes, I have gone back to the other kind of exciting stuff. Specifically, I thought it important to address some thoughts I have about where Africa sits in this conversation around AI.
Disclaimer: This blog post came out of a recent conversation with some friends around Africa’s industrialization path, or lack thereof. It was super interesting. First, because these were classmates, and second, because our views varied, and the friendly intellectually and passionate banter was necessary. The question around “industrialisation” in Africa is always an interesting one. Since independence, many African countries have tried different variants of it. So far, the results have been a little less than remarkable. Anyway, one of the super interesting parts of the conversation was when the topic of AI came up. The grievances around AI had to do with:
- The rents for AI are not accruing to Africans. Thus, we need to shelf the focus on AI and concentrate on dealing with more core issues.
- Africa’s woes are largely around job creation and technological innovations pose a risk to that.
To start us off, what is AI? Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. The term is frequently applied to the development of systems endowed with the intellectual processes that are characteristic of humans. This includes the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience. A friend recently wrote a good deal about AI, read more if interested.
Here are two major thoughts on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in international development, in Africa specifically.
Post Map
FIRST, AI IS ALREADY HERE AND IN CHARGE.
I think it’s safe to say AI is not a thing of the future, it is of the now. It’s here and shaping our world in more ways than we may understand. Here are a few examples of it in action:
- Opening your phone with face ID.
- Our favourite social media platforms. According to Forbes, ‘not only is artificial intelligence working behind the scenes to personalize what you see on your feeds (because it’s learned what types of posts most resonate with you based on past history), it’s figuring out friend suggestions, identifying and filtering out fake news and machine learning is working to prevent cyberbullying.’
- Email or message – Yes indeed! You know how Gmail, for instance, is always trying to finish your sentence as you start typing two characters? That’s all machine learning aka AI. And, so are your anti-virus software and spam filters.
- Voice-activated personal assistants (think Siri and others). Digital voice assistants to say the very least are major manifestations of AI. And they are getting incredibly good and sharp.
- Netflix, Uber, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Turnitin (a plagiarism checker), Plane autopilot mode, Google Maps, and all the tailored advertisements we see when we run our fiftieth Google search of the day. Yes.
Side note: Let no one confuse you when they say, “its machine learning, not AI”. All machine learning is AI, but not all AI is machine learning. Simple as beans.
SECOND, LEVERAGING TECH REQUIRES CAUTION AND COLLABORATION.
We need to play a bigger role in managing how tech innovations are used to develop solutions.
Development practitioners need to own and be accountable for AI development and deployment. We know now more than ever before that data is the most priced resource of any economic actor – or country. To allow data of African consumers to be amassed, stored and manipulated in faraway lands might be careless – kindly stated. All economic actors act in their own economic interest – and so should we.
I say this because AI does have the potential to solve some of the continent’s obstinate problems. However, with this potential comes the likelihood for abuse and misuse – some of which may very well be unintended. When we consider that projects in the development space typically involve foreign organizations as implementers, there are indeed numerous layers of accountability and responsibility to contemplate. Without proper consideration of ethical risks, these powerful analytical tools can harm the very communities they are designed to help. This is especially worse when one considers the more vulnerable and low-income communities at the receiving end of technology-powered solutions. We need to be more interested and concerned about transparency, fairness and inclusion, accountability, data limitations, and privacy and security.
IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) IN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ALL BAD?
It is really not all bad news. Check out a few cool AI systems tackling some of “Africa’s key challenges”, according to JPIA:
- mCrops, a Ugandan tech solution that uses image processing tools to help farmers diagnose crop disease.
- Kudi.ai, Nigerian chatbot system that responds to financial requests and allows people to make payments and send money via messaging.
- Aajoh, Nigerian AI system for remote medical diagnosis to deal with a massive shortage of doctors in the country.
- Aerobotics, a South African start-up that uses drones and satellite imaging to help farmers optimize crop yields in Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique.
The point is that AI is here and will become an even more prominent part of our lives. Thus, instead of pretending that it’s not shaping everything, we need to be more attentive to questions around access and the use of AI systems.
How do we monitor and ensure that all these novel solutions do no harm? I do not have the answer. But I sure do believe we need to keep asking these questions, even for things like AfCFTA We need to interrogate, with the intention to safeguard the most vulnerable, the “goodwill” of development enthusiasts – foreign and domestic alike. Our goals must be to do better than we have done in the past century. We truly cannot afford to get development wrong anymore.
Noelle Wonders
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Very insightful as always! As we begin to see the ways that AI is shaping all of our lives in a digital sense, there is an imperative need to begin to shape how AI will take hold in Africa. I say take hold because it is important that it does so. AI is tech development’s newest baby and it is shaping our lives in ways that many people do not quite grasp. As said in the “Social Dilemma” documentary, those who are not shaping technology are often the ones being shaped and it’s a very damning recognition of the power… Read more »
All I can say is Amen to this! We need to be active participants in defining what role it plays, how it does, and when it does.