Tapping Artificial Intelligence (AI) For Africa (TAIFA)

Through TAIFA we hope to focus on making AI accessible, agreeable, affordable, acceptable and available using narration that stimulates, inspires, transforms and spurs action. ?Africans need to be facilitated to embrace AI.

It should be the duty of different actors, most especially the governments to promote contexts where diverse AI development teams are nurtured and supported; where the use of diverse and representative training data is made possible and upheld; make it a norm to test AI systems for biases and unfair outcomes; establish policies, plans and programming that upholds transparency and accountability in AI development; and make AI that is representative of different moods, nuances, culture, people and diversities. Africa should not be left behind.

AI makes it easier for culture to be perceived as an abundant raw material to turn into labor opportunities for Africans. This is why Africa should be bothered by AI even while all the hype about industrialization, globalization, borderless-visaless travel within Africa and investment in infrastructure are vying for center stage.

Africa (the continent and her people) have to turn their cultural diversity into descriptive AI with compatible heuristics directly comprehended at immediate, intermediate and extreme-mediate levels. This means that they will create the critical data which will become the bodies of AI matter. Cultural diversity of specific racial or ethnic groups contributes to AI development and deployment. This will be one way of addressing AI-related biases as well as propping up different AI-related perspectives. We shall be able to grade AI according to structure, functionS, capabilities and purpose. For instance one can tap into NAMBI for “Novel Augmented Mind Broadening Iteration,” or “LLaMA for “Large Language Model Meta AI.”

So how can Africans make their cultures into raw material for labor opportunities? The straight answer is by turning cultural diversity into AI heuristics:

African knowledge of any kind can be developed into accessible forms through typesetting/writing, numeration, audio, visual or other means to make data. This is dat in turn is used to train AI systems. With more sources of data it means more options of AI. This sets the stage for Algorithmic AI options. Developers' cultural backgrounds contribute to the products that influence algorithm designs leading to a variety of outcomes. Africa has the potential to contribute to the kind of diversity needed in AI development. Cultural enrichment contributes to braoder representative AI development because different people of the world bring their experiences which add to diverse perspectives, leading to AI systems that are inclusive, fair.

Democracy has immense benefits in that it establishes systems and structures that in turn contribute to an improved quality of life of people, planet and how they produce. Inclusive and fair AI disseminates democracy further and we are bound to witness local communities engaged in activities that uphold internationally acclaimed standards where diverse populations feel served, involved, consulted and stakeholders.

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