Author: The Conversation

by Christopher Adam, University of Oxford The high cost of making cross border payments on the African continent has driven governments on the continent to seek options of settling trade and other transactions in local currencies. This has given birth to the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System which is scheduled to go live in 2024 under Kenya’s leadership. Development economist Christopher Adam, who has studied the exchange rate policies of African countries, answers some key questions. Why are African countries exposed in the international currency market? Three main reasons. First, African economies are small and as such are highly dependent…

BY Alexander Claus Winkler, Rhodes University “Drone fishing” is a relatively recent innovation in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles. Some recreational anglers are using personal drones to fly baited lines into hard-to-reach areas of water, or to look for good fishing areas. Recreational fishing is a popular sport and hobby in South Africa, which has a 2,850km shoreline. The most recent estimate of the number of marine shore based anglers is about 400,000. The group of researchers I’m part of, who study linefish (fish caught using hook and line) became aware over the past 10 years or so of…

by Niusha Shafiabady, Charles Darwin University Artificial intelligence is changing the world – and one of the main areas it will affect in the short-to-medium term is the workforce. AI algorithms imitate real-world systems. The more repetitive a system is, the easier it is for AI to replace it. That’s why jobs in customer service, retail and clerical roles are regularly named as being the most at risk. That doesn’t mean other jobs won’t be affected. The latest advances in AI have shown all kinds of creative work and white-collar professions stand to be impacted to various degrees. However, there’s…

by Adam Behr, Newcastle University In 2023, to still be working on Beatles music … to release a new song the public haven’t heard, I think it’s an exciting thing. Not surprisingly, Paul McCartney was positive about the appearance this week of what has been trailed as the “last” Beatles song, Now and Then. Much has been made of AI being part of the production. Machine learning was used to recognise John Lennon’s voice, and then isolate it from other sounds – a piano, a television in the background, electrical hum – to make it usable in a new recording.…

by Daniel Gervais, Vanderbilt University and John Nay, Stanford University Only “persons” can engage with the legal system – for example, by signing contracts or filing lawsuits. There are two main categories of persons: humans, termed “natural persons,” and creations of the law, termed “artificial persons.” These include corporations, nonprofit organizations and limited liability companies (LLCs). Up to now, artificial persons have served the purpose of helping humans achieve certain goals. For example, people can pool assets in a corporation and limit their liability vis-à-vis customers or other persons who interact with the corporation. But a new type of artificial…

by Arno J. van Niekerk, University of the Free State South Africa must tread carefully in its economic relationships to avoid being caught in the escalating tension between east and west, and more specifically China and the US. The country’s hosting, and the outcome, of the 2023 Agoa Summit should strengthen its role in diplomatic relations and contribute towards safeguarding the country’s economic interests. From 2-4 November 2023, the US and 35 sub-Saharan African countries will meet in Johannesburg for the 20th Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum (Agoa Forum). It entails strengthening trade and investment ties between the US…

By Ravi Sen, Texas A&M University Google, Microsoft and others boast that generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT will make searching the internet better than ever for users. For example, rather than having to wade through a sea of URLs, users will be able to just get an answer combed from the entire internet. There are also some concerns with the rise of AI-fueled search engines, such as the opacity over where information comes from, the potential for “hallucinated” answers and copyright issues. But one other consequence is that I believe it may destroy the US$68 billion search engine optimization…

by Edward Webster, University of the Witwatersrand From US car factories to public sector workers in Nigeria and South Africa, strikes by trade unions continue unabated among the established sectors of the working class. In Detroit in the US, workers are resisting contract employment. In Nigeria they are angry over the rising cost of living and in South Africa, municipal workers are striking for better wages. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to build sustainable worker organisations as companies employ more people on a casual basis in the digital age. Work has become more precarious and workers are easily replaceable. In…

by Claire Seungeun Lee, UMass Lowell Each day, you leave digital traces of what you did, where you went, who you communicated with, what you bought, what you’re thinking of buying, and much more. This mass of data serves as a library of clues for personalized ads, which are sent to you by a sophisticated network – an automated marketplace of advertisers, publishers and ad brokers that operates at lightning speed. The ad networks are designed to shield your identity, but companies and governments are able to combine that information with other data, particularly phone location, to identify you and…

by Dipuo Winnie Kgotleng, University of Johannesburg and Robyn Pickering, University of Cape Town When a Virgin Galactic commercial flight soared into space on 8 September 2023, there were two Virgin Galactic pilots, an instructor and three passengers on board – as well as two fossils of ancient prehuman relatives from South Africa. Timothy Nash, a businessman, carried a clavicle belonging to Australopithecus sediba and the thumb bone of a Homo naledi specimen. The fossils’ brief journey – the VSS Unity’s flight lasted just an hour – was organised by palaeontologist Lee Berger, who led the team that discovered and…

By Renaud Foucart, Lancaster University After many years of designing and selling a variety of different cables to power and charge its devices, Apple has slowly switched to USB-C chargers for all of its products. The last device to swap is the iPhone, and it happened against Apple’s will. In October last year, the European Commission requested all phones and laptop producers switch to the USB-C connector (which had earlier been agreed on as a common standard). Apple could have chosen to ignore the request and stop selling in the EU, or to produce versions with USB-C for the European…

By Mark Bailey, National Intelligence University There are alien minds among us. Not the little green men of science fiction, but the alien minds that power the facial recognition in your smartphone, determine your creditworthiness and write poetry and computer code. These alien minds are artificial intelligence systems, the ghost in the machine that you encounter daily. But AI systems have a significant limitation: Many of their inner workings are impenetrable, making them fundamentally unexplainable and unpredictable. Furthermore, constructing AI systems that behave in ways that people expect is a significant challenge. If you fundamentally don’t understand something as unpredictable…

By Imraan Valodia, University of the Witwatersrand South Africa is ranked one of the most unequal societies in the world. The Conversation Africa spoke to Imraan Valodia, a professor of economics and dean of the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management at the University of the Witwatersrand, about inequality in South Africa. Has income inequality got worse in the last 20 years? According to the most recent data, South Africa has the highest income inequality in the world, with a Gini coefficient of around 0.67. The Gini coefficient is a widely used statistical measure of how income is distributed in…

by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, SOAS, University of London Bad data does not only produce bad outcomes. It can also help to suppress sections of society, for instance vulnerable women and minorities. This is the argument of my new book on the relationship between various forms of racism and sexism and artificial intelligence (AI). The problem is acute. Algorithms generally need to be exposed to data – often taken from the internet – in order to improve at whatever they do, such as screening job applications, or underwriting mortgages. But the training data often contains many of the biases that exist in…

by John P. Nelson, Georgia Institute of Technology The media frenzy surrounding ChatGPT and other large language model artificial intelligence systems spans a range of themes, from the prosaic – large language models could replace conventional web search – to the concerning – AI will eliminate many jobs – and the overwrought – AI poses an extinction-level threat to humanity. All of these themes have a common denominator: large language models herald artificial intelligence that will supersede humanity. But large language models, for all their complexity, are actually really dumb. And despite the name “artificial intelligence,” they’re completely dependent on…

by Isaac Abotebuno Akolgo, Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies Fintechs, notably mobile money, have transformed banking and finance in developing and emerging economies in Africa and beyond. Financial technology (better known as fintech) is used to describe new technology that seeks to improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services. Mobile money in Africa was spearheaded by Kenya’s M-Pesa in 2007. Ghana’s MTN MoMo followed in 2009. Mobile money is a pay-as-you-go digital medium of exchange and store of value using mobile money accounts and a mobile phone. In Ghana, the volume of mobile money transactions…

BY Kristen Schiele, University of Southern California Elon Musk’s recent rebranding of Twitter as X is a step toward the CEO’s goal of developing an “everything app.” Musk’s vision is for X to mark the spot for all your digital needs – to chat with your friends, order groceries, watch videos and manage your finances, all on one platform. His recent announcement might have left you wondering what an everything app is and whether you need really one. If everything apps are so great, why isn’t there one that’s widely used in the U.S. already? As someone who studies how…

by Alexis Souchet, University of Southern California Some employers are excited about swapping out computer monitors for virtual reality headsets, but the side effects of using VR are not completely understood. In a recent study, my colleagues and I propose 90 factors that could influence VR side effects in the workplace. In another study, we suggest guidelines to reduce these negative symptoms. Our analysis considers over 350 studies to identify a range of VR side effects. Some negative symptoms of VR use – like headaches, tiredness, eyestrain and neck and shoulder pain –are familiar to those workers who sit at…

by Lisa Garbe, WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Senegal’s government has shut down internet access in response to protests about the sentencing of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko. This is a tactic governments are increasingly used during times of political contention, such as elections or social upheaval. The shutdowns can be partial or total, temporary or prolonged. They may target specific platforms, regions, or an entire country. I’m a researcher who investigates the causes and consequences of internet access disruptions and censorship in various African countries. This includes understanding how shutdowns work. It’s important to understand the complex technicalities behind internet…

BY Holly Willis, University of Southern California The bitter conflict between actors, writers and other creative professionals and the major movie and TV studios represents a flashpoint in the radical transformation roiling the entertainment industry. The ongoing strikes by the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild were sparked in part by artificial intelligence and its use in the movie industry. Both actors and writers fear that the major studios, including Amazon/MGM, Apple, Disney/ABC/Fox, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount/CBS, Sony, Warner Bros. and HBO, will use generative AI to exploit them. Generative AI is a form of artificial intelligence that…

by Bhaso Ndzendze, University of Johannesburg and Siphamandla Zondi, University of Johannesburg Eager to escape perceived western domination, several countries – mostly in the global south – are looking to join the Brics bloc. The five-country bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is also looking to grow its global partnerships. What began in 2001 as an acronym for four of the fastest growing states, BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), is projected to account for 45% of global GDP in purchasing power parity terms by 2030. It has evolved into a political formation as well. Crucial to this…

by Guillaume Thierry, Bangor University The release of the advanced chatbot ChatGPT in 2022 got everyone talking about artificial intelligence (AI). Its sophisticated capabilities amplified concerns about AI becoming so advanced that soon we would not be able to control it. This even led some experts and industry leaders to warn that the technology could lead to human extinction. Other commentators, though, were not convinced. Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistics, dismissed ChatGPT as “hi-tech plagiarism”. For years, I was relaxed about the prospect of AI’s impact on human existence and our environment. That’s because I always thought of it…

by Nnenna Ifeanyi-Ajufo, University of Bradford _Several African countries are pursuing digital transformation ambitions – applying new technologies to enhance the development of society. But concerns exist over the absence of appropriate policies across the continent to create a resilient and secure cyber environment. Nnenna Ifeanyi-Ajufo, a technology law expert, explains the current cyber governance situation in Africa. What is cyber governance and why is it so important? Cyber governance is an important aspect of the international cybersecurity strategy for preventing and mitigating cyber threats. It features oversight processes, decision-making hierarchies and international cooperation. It also includes systems for accountability…

BY Emilio Ferrara, University of Southern California When I asked ChatGPT for a joke about Sicilians the other day, it implied that Sicilians are stinky. ChatGPT can sometimes produce stereotypical or offensive outputs. Screen capture by Emilio Ferrara, CC BY-ND As somebody born and raised in Sicily, I reacted to ChatGPT’s joke with disgust. But at the same time, my computer scientist brain began spinning around a seemingly simple question: Should ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence systems be allowed to be biased? You might say “Of course not!” And that would be a reasonable response. But there are some researchers,…

by Bruce Schneier, Harvard Kennedy School and Nathan Sanders, Harvard University If you ask Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant AI system, whether Amazon is a monopoly, it responds by saying it doesn’t know. It doesn’t take much to make it lambaste the other tech giants, but it’s silent about its own corporate parent’s misdeeds. When Alexa responds in this way, it’s obvious that it is putting its developer’s interests ahead of yours. Usually, though, it’s not so obvious whom an AI system is serving. To avoid being exploited by these systems, people will need to learn to approach AI skeptically. That…