Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00CEO of the Global Centre of AI Governance and author of The New Empire of AI, the Future
00:06of Global Inequality. Ms. Rachel Adams, thanks so much for your time. Can I start simply
00:11by asking you to explain to us how can AI lead to greater inequality?
00:16Well, thank you very much for having me here on the show. I think one of the major routes
00:23of inequality is around people's access to work and labour opportunities. Now, we don't
00:29have a precise understanding of what the impact of AI will be on labour markets across Africa,
00:35largely because Africa's economies are largely informal and AI technologies are really designed
00:42to support functions within formal economies and industries. What we do know is that those
00:48most likely to be impacted by AI job displacements are those with least formal skills and particularly
00:55women which could affect much of the African continent. What we are also seeing is the
01:01rise of these platform economies like Uber and also particularly digital click work with
01:08the rise of generative AI technologies which require a huge amount of painstaking human
01:15labour to refine and make the market ready. Across much of Africa, many people are taking
01:21on these kinds of work, but they're not stable, they do not provide decent pay or labour conditions
01:31and so they're not going to be a route out of poverty.
01:36So is it a case of investing more? Is that where a lot of countries, as you mentioned
01:41there in Africa, may fall behind because they don't have the money to put into providing
01:47data that would give their economies the upper hand when it comes to AI?
01:51Yes, I think that's particularly important. We've seen that AI is extremely costly to
01:58produce. Even the new deep-seek revelation, it wasn't that they didn't have millions
02:04in order to create those new innovations. So African innovators are particularly further
02:12behind in terms of the kinds of investment and finance that they need to develop cutting-edge
02:19systems. So what we're looking for is African governments to put in place enabling policies
02:27that will help local innovators to flourish and disrupt some of the market concentration
02:33of big tech that's particularly dominant across much of the African continent.
02:39Can you give us an idea, because indeed AI, it is, is it not, dominated by the United
02:42States and China when it comes to developing these systems? Give an idea of the impact
02:47they have and to what extent some countries could avoid a future so heavily dominated
02:52by AI?
02:53Yeah, I mean, I think one of the really important ways to disrupt what I call this kind of new
03:00empire of AI, and it's a very complex empire because it's not replicable to the old European
03:09empires when the two powers that we're seeing are China on the one hand and the US on the
03:15other. But part of the way that we can counter this is really investing in local innovators
03:21who can develop, or they tend to have a much deeper understanding of their communities
03:28that they're trying to serve and the challenges that they're trying to solve for. And really
03:33kind of develop solutions that help solve the intractable challenges rather than just
03:40help line the pockets of tech billionaires.
03:44Where do you see that solution coming from? I mean, we're having this summit in Paris,
03:47an international summit. I know that the African continent has its own AI summit every year.
03:54Is there a will among countries to set up kind of global rules to make it a fair playing
03:59game? I imagine it all comes down to the money and they'll do whatever brings in the most
04:02money to their own countries.
04:04Yeah, I mean, I think global governance is particularly important for dealing with some
04:09of the kind of malicious use and misinformation issues. And one of the worries we have is
04:14that African voices and priorities are often not well reflected in global debates. But
04:20I have seen, I mean, one of the really powerful initiatives across the African continent
04:25is the Artificial Intelligence for Development program that's supported by the International
04:30Development Research Centre of Canada and the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office
04:35in the UK. And I believe this is the largest AI fund for development in Africa. Within
04:42this initiative, there are innovators developing technologies to solve for food insecurity
04:49in West Africa or to develop textbooks for children at scale in local African languages
04:56across French-speaking Africa or apps to support pregnant women in East Africa. So there's
05:02a lot of groundbreaking work. And part of what these summits need to do is raise the
05:08visibility of the very powerful and groundbreaking initiatives that are already underway.
05:15Okay, and the positive side that we can get out of artificial intelligence, if there is one.
05:21Ms. Rachel Adams, thanks so much for your time. Founding CEO of the Global Centre of
05:25AI Governance and author of that book, The New Empire of AI, The Future of Global Inequality.
05:31Ms. Rachel Adams, joining us there.