Artificial Intelligence Will Not Save Us Unless We Own the Data
The artificial intelligence revolution is coming to Africa whether Africa is ready or not. The question is not whether AI will transform African economies. It will. The question is...
The artificial intelligence revolution is coming to Africa whether Africa is ready or not. The question is not whether AI will transform African economies. It will. The question is whether Africans will be transformed by AI systems built on African data but owned and monetised by corporations headquartered elsewhere.
The history of the digital economy in Africa should give us pause. Mobile telecommunications transformed the continent, but network equipment and applications were almost entirely imported. Social media connected 600 million Africans, but the platforms that harvest their attention are American.
AI is different from all of these technologies in one crucial respect: its value is almost entirely determined by the data on which it is trained. An AI model trained on African languages and conditions is infinitely more valuable to Africans than a universal model adapted at the margins.
If African institutions do not claim sovereignty over their data now, before the AI companies arrive with their terms of service, it will be too late.
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