"Bernita didn’t know that the photo had gone around the world. She didn’t know she was strong and brave and a symbol of our division and a vessel for our fears. She didn’t know that people who didn’t know her thought they knew her." www.notus.org/metro/viral-...

"Democracy is strongest when we understand it, participate in it, and reject the hatred that threatens it. That’s work worth doing every day." — Roswell Encina

Honored to have been appointed as the inaugural Policy Lead for Black in AI! Over the next few months, I'll be establishing the strategic foundation for our emerging Policy & Civil Society Pillar by increasing our engagement with policy issues core to our mission.

Deeply concerning report from the Cambridge Programme on AI Science & Policy: "...both factions of Boko Haram use frontier AI, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Meta AI, and DeepSeek, to assist in combat and day-to-day operations." casp.ac/reports/ai-e...

Very disappointing to see how a single veto can block an organization doing vital work in the digital ecosystem. The World Intellectual Property Organization should consider how this reflects on the organization at large. wikimediafoundation.org/news/2026/07...

even if he isn’t dead or brain dead or whatever, I don’t think any elected official should be able to go mysteriously absent from their job for several weeks

"...the barrier to saving lives is rarely data accuracy, but the absence of the policy infrastructure required to act on it." yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/07/ai-c...

Saw the TLC musical last week at Arena Stage and it was phenomenal! The actors did an amazing job and the singing was on point.

During my last week at the UN, I finally did a tour of the grounds, and there’s a great football/soccer exhibit near the main entrance ⚽️

Being a woman rocks because if you use AI you’re stupid and if you don’t use AI you’re dumb

Research find: Tracy Chapman playing an anti-apartheid rally on the Boston Common in 1986. (Photo by Mark Lurie)

The only joy I'll get from the inevitable sea rise from Global warming is that Mar-a-Lago will one of the first things under water

The flyovers in D.C. are beginning…it’s going to be a long (and loud) weekend 😑

While pruning my Google Scholar profile, I noticed a "hallucinated" citation of an actual article of mine in an undergraduate dissertation at a university in the Czech Republic 🙃 Google needs to develop a way for authors to flag these issues to maintain the integrity of our profiles!

My latest piece for Science Magazine examines the burgeoning landscape of AI diplomacy in Africa, surveying the history of science diplomacy stemming from the Cold War, and current participation by African governments within international AI cooperation. doi.org/10.1126/scie...

"Too many CEOs thought they could benefit from quid pro quos and a close relationship with President Donald Trump. They cheered on his broad policies of deregulation and stayed largely quiet when his erratic policies hurt others." www.ft.com/content/4e17...

there is a robust ”AI by Africans” industry. It’s on a crash course with a lot of ethnic and racialized jobs/markets. that data on the growth of non-american Black population growth + african/chinese/russian networks of capital is going to blow folks minds, if they haven’t been paying attention

I’m tired of people calling Black voters moderate. No, they are *risk averse*, and they’ve got 407 years of reasons for that. My guess is they, like lots of other Americans, now see the risks of inaction and of the status quo.

"The co-founder of AI startup Sarvam recently hosted a mixer of about 150 in the Bay Area 'trying to recruit Indian AI talent in the U.S. to come back to India and work for him,'...Sarvam is India’s biggest bet for a sovereign large language model startup." restofworld.org/2026/silicon...

SpaceX is the biggest pump-and-dump scheme in market history and if you don’t recognize this now you’re going to learn eventually

Read this article a while ago and this quote stuck with me: “A growing body of data shows that men engage in higher rates of infidelity and emotional and physical abuse when outpaced by female partners in traditional markers of wealth and status such as income.” www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Jeffries and Schumer competing on the daily for who can have the least charisma on the planet

At DCA, and my already delayed flight is delayed further due to an airshow 😐

Quote from a former Meta employee: "When workers raised concerns, leadership doubled down and failed to acknowledge the risks...Leadership has clearly created an authoritarian environment where workers are no longer respected or heard." www.wired.com/story/meta-p...

🚨 Announcing our #keynote speaker for the 4th Trust AI Workshop at @deeplearningindaba.bsky.social ! We are excited to welcome Dr. @chinasa.bsky.social . Dr Okolo is the Founder of Technecultura and has been recognized as one of the world’s most influential people in AI by TIME.

Grateful to be part of this collaborative research paper, "Reimagining Open Source and Openness in AI: Co-Creating Responsible Technological Futures," that will be presented next week at the ACM FAccT Conference in Montréal! @facct.bsky.social arxiv.org/pdf/2606.07764

When utilized in literature review, LLMs consistently 1. fail to mention female authors in female-led literatures, 2. insist that men are more influential or more heavily cited when this is contradicted by objective citation counts, and 3. attribute women’s work to hallucinated male scholars.

There were some ugly claims on X that Janeese was the candidate of white “transplants” while McDuffie was the choice of longtime Black residents. But it looks like McDuffie will only win ward 3 (wealthy, white) while Janeese will carry every other ward (including majority-Black wards 7 and 8).

These primaries were quite interesting! I’m very curious about how this discourse applies to Black transplants like myself.

"...the notion that African governments today are inherently incapable of a society-wide industrial revolution because of their political and institutional challenges is not entirely true." www.globalcenter.ai/research/sma...

The French government's new suite of open source office software, "LaSuite", is pretty impressive! Looking forward to seeing how more governments divest from U.S software companies. lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr

I hope all Black women take a day for themselves this week. Last night was a lot.

The refusal of the US government to admit Somali referee Omar Artan is a reminder that the United States has a long history of using sports as a tool of exclusion, especially when it comes to African and African-descended athletes. africasacountry.com/2026/06/cont...

I work a block away from the White House, and I've refused to walk near there for almost a month now due to the increasing shenanigans.

"About two-thirds of upcoming datacenters, which typically require a large amount of water to operate, are set to be built in places that have been among the driest in the country over the past year." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

I’ve been trying to learn more about Folarin Balogun, and all the articles mentioning him being American by “accident” are so weird 🥴 The writer of this piece for Men’s Journal is truly deranged.

llms don't and can't love, hate, feel, care, think, imagine, dream, hope, fear, believe, reflect, aspire, wonder, empathize,... fix your your anthropomorphising language

I pray I never fall off as hard as Colin Kaepernick, to where I start pushing AI slop to maintain my livelihood 🙏🏾

"...Africa’s future is currently being written in languages that Western companies are not learning to speak." foreignpolicy.com/2026/06/08/c...

The most important “data centres” to invest in will always be public schools.

Already told my team at the UN that I’ll be working remotely tomorrow, I refuse to travel to Penn Station this week 😅

"Rich Africans often end up seeing their countries as a place to generate capital — but not to store it. Economic dynamism has, in effect, advanced faster than the financial systems needed to retain wealth." www.semafor.com/article/06/0...

This week, UNESCO is hosting a policy dialogue on Freedom and Safety of Scientists, which looks interesting! I'm sure a report will follow soon. www.unesco.org/en/articles/...

Seen on my commute from the UN HQ back to Penn Station earlier this week. #FreePalestine 🇵🇸

"An asteroid took the dinosaurs out. Now it’s looking increasingly likely we’re going to be wiped out because a cohort of rich losers keep being told 'You’re absolutely right!' by ChatGPT." This last sentence was everything 🤣 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"The omnipresence of ChatGPT has forced a conversation about the value of academic work, the role of public universities and the perils of partnerships with private industry." www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/m...

"...W. E. B. Du Bois insisted that technological change could not be understood apart from relations of power, particularly those structured by race and empire." www.amacad.org/publication/...

"...this network of U.S.-themed accounts does not appear to be run from within the United States at all; Facebook’s Page Transparency feature indicates that some, and possibly all, of the accounts are actually operated from Bangladesh." www.conspirator0.com/p/life-in-us...

This is great! Since the day I moved into D.C., the mosquitoes here have been eating me alive and it hasn’t stopped yet 😭

Inspired to see pushback by Ghanaians against the subpar new bill released by their ICT ministry, which would require technology professionals to pay annual licensing fees. The ministry also installed the CEO of a foreign tech company as its board chair. brightsimons.com/2026/05/the-...