What are you working on at the moment?
My name is Arthur Gwagwa. I am a senior research associate with CIPIT at Strathmore University in the law school. I am working as research ICT Africa on a Microsoft funded project. Mostly working on ethics of AI algorithm bias and discrimination and impact of AI and imaging technologies on society but fortly on the geopolitics of AI and recently I was advising the Government of Canada on the impact of AI on government structures.
How do you perceive development and Artificial Intelligence?
I think there is probably one area that is being underestimated is the issue of the geopolitics, because geopolitics and geo-economics go hand in hand. It is about who is going to be driving that agenda. Whether it is going to be Canada, the United States and their allies or maybe China on the other hand. That is going to define their development trajectory on the continent. How I see the future is that the human right respecting countries or committee of democracies need to be defining that ownership of data, investment in special data infrastructure, but also identifying core sectors where AI should land, education, agriculture and health. Most importantly I think, the issue of inclusion, bottom-up approach whereby we consult the communities and the constituents and that again to be affected by when AI fully lands in Africa. So, the future is positive.
What is your blue sky project in Africa?
Like Tony Blair said in 1997, “education, education, education”, because that’s the foundation. Thank you.