On AI

A neuron is a biological computer.? If the simplest functional unit in Ghana is one Ghanaian, then one neuron would be same for the brain.? If Ghana has 33 million functional units, then the brain has 850 billion neurons.? And all these neurons are crammed into a skull volume equivalent to one litre. The world wide web has under 25 billion interconnected computers, spread all over the world.? So a single brain, is more complex than the world wide web.? A single neuron can have more than 100000 inputs.? No single computer can ever compete with this number of inputs: the average computer will have maximum 10 USB jacks.

The power of the brain has never depended on the number of its neurons, but on the intricate connectivity driving neuronal computing power to levels unreachable by the biggest supercomputers.? Artificial intelligence depends on 25 billion computers connected together, to function. That number is growing every day, and as more supercomputers are added to the mix, the power of AI will continue to grow.? But again, it has never been the number of computers, or datacenter which determines the computing power of the world wide web, it is the extent of connectivity.

These connections enable social media, streaming services, cloud storage to work.? Africa has 1% of the world’s data centers, and most of them are in South Africa.? In fact, the whole of Africa has the same number of data centers as Mumbai. Africa is the youngest continent with the human resource that will power the future.? If the future is AI, then we are not ready. We have to let our infrastructure show what our aspirations are.

A friend recently pointed out to me something makes complete sense.? That intelligence has always been a matter of connectivity and community.? Intelligence is the product of collaboration. The only reason why humans should feel threatened by AI, is the fact that collaboration is slowly missing.? The true tragedy is the inability to interact as human beings.? An inability so dense that we can imagine a network 25 billion computers being more intelligent than humans. There are 6 billion of of us, each with the equivalent of 40 world wide webs in each head. The inability to connect and collaborate lies behind every tragedy that has befallen our race, from wars, to climate change.

The countries which have achieved anything, invest into the tools that harness the minds to team play.? They make education and healthcare free and accessible so that minds will bubble with activity. ? They invest into the catalysts of brain function, sustaining ecosystems of available education, good healthcare, free speech… the list goes on. And these investments never go waste.? There is a line that divides the world into two now:? The collaboration line.? And the most successful countries are on the collaboration side of the line.? They have paid the price, they wreak their benefits.? The countries on the other side of the line will continue to struggle, institutions will fail.? In our detachment from each other, the necessary synergies required to catalyse productivity run adrift, ravaged by the hurricane of status quo, the polluted lake of procrastination, and the skyscraper heights of? waves of power abuse.

And of course, in the disparate dystopia where human beings will not collaborate, no one can beat AI.