I’m thrilled to announce I’ve joined the newly formed SAIGE Council from @partnershipai.bsky.social, a multi-stakeholder community addressing the most important and difficult questions concerning the future of AI.

From the @thecontinent.org: "...the children appeared to be victims of a systematic recruitment operation that manipulated them into posting political slogans, insults directed at the Egyptian President, calls to open Gaza’s Rafah crossing..."

"...the problem has proved beyond the algorithms. We know surprisingly little about our own biology. There are many mysteries in how our cells interact and challenges in measuring our body’s most crucial processes, starving models of the data they need to make more rapid progress." on.ft.com/4pgIyqT

“States should think very carefully about what they actually want to get out of this before spending hundreds of billions of dollars trying to indigenize the entire AI stack. You still won’t be able to eliminate dependencies and vulnerabilities on foreign states.” restofworld.org/2025/chinese...

"The ICT sector rose an annual 21.3% in the second quarter driven by DATA USAGE, said Iddrisu, helping the services industry to expand 9.9% from a revised 7.8% in the prior three months."

"...the process of getting a job has become a late-capitalist nightmare. Online hiring platforms have made it easier to find an opening but harder to secure one.." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"For SMEs, double-digit loan rates have made credit costly, while freelancers—some of whom rely on foreign contracts—have been squeezed by a slowdown in overseas deals that has eroded their incomes amid rising living costs." techcabal.com/2025/08/29/n...

we at @aial.ie, are investigating amplification/censorship on X/twitter in EU. what are major EU: -politicians & regulators -journalists -influencers & public intellectuals, with high visibility/influence on X, across both left & right political ideologies we're interested in existing datasets too

"What is missing is a preventive, policy-driven architecture that ensures content moderation practices are humane, companies are accountable for their algorithms, and corporate actors cannot hide behind layers of subcontracting to escape responsibility." blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/...

If I can give you any advice about anything it would be this - do everything in your power to protect yourself from being governed by people who hate you.

"But the war for talent is not just about output — it’s about perception. A start-up’s ability to attract investors and a listed company’s ability to keep its stock price up are both aided by the buzz generated by a few superstar minds." www.ft.com/content/9e9f...

New publication alert! The Challenges of Accountability in AI for Immigration: The IRCC and Canadian AI Governance balsilliecases.ca/case-study/t...

Starlink's expansion across markets in Africa and other Global South countries have raised concerns about digital exclusion - high prices and more users within high-income communities, but there are much bigger regulatory and geopolitical implications we might be underestimating.

"The group said it would strike the overseas deals in co-ordination with the US government." www.ft.com/content/060c...

Countries in the Global South and poorer communities should not be treated as experimental labs for testing AI’s potential - to solve socio-economic challenges.

One reason for skepticism towards AI hype is many of the same people insisted the Metaverse was definitely the future and you're dumb if you didn't get that, and before that insisted NFTs were definitely the future and you're dumb if you didn't get that. LLMS seem to have more use cases, but still.

For the love of God, I am tired of hearing tech optimists in Africa saying "AI is going to take away jobs in Africa". Read more about the technological and political culture of Africa.

"Half of the fund will come from the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the Japanese government’s overseas development assistance arm, with the remainder covered by a matching sum from the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority." www.semafor.com/article/03/1...

"From experience, we know that current training programs for fieldwork and data collection in the Global North do not necessarily reflect the complex positionalities of Global South researchers." blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...

If African governments do not invest in building the infrastructure needed to leverage AI, the “AI Messiahs” who sing “AI will solve all of Africa’s problems” will continue to shape the future of AI in Africa www.lcfi.ac.uk/news-events/...

@kofiemeritus.bsky.social nails it!

My research piece for University of Cambridge's Leverhulme CFI argues that the perception held by some African techno-solutionists that Africa is leading its own AI future is overly optimistic and overlooks the significant influence of external actors. www.lcfi.ac.uk/news-events/...

Meta cancelling professional factchecking in favor of community notes is causing worry in West Africa, where online disinfo has led to community violence and death: globalvoices.org/2025/02/21/t... - Great Global Voices coverage.

The bare fact of civic disempowerment is the one constant in contemporary aid programs regardless of whichever model – St. Petersburg or Brussels – prevails." odi.org/en/insights/...

I enjoyed reviewing and contributing to this important report by the Tony Blair Institute. It raises important debate on how to develop effective AI regulation in the global south, amidst the complexity of harmonising the diverse geopolitical interests. institute.global/insights/tec...

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

Great blog from @mattsclancy.bsky.social on measuring returns to government R&D! One key finding: when govt funds a 1% increase in R&D “capital stock," the whole economy gets ~0.2% more productive a decade later. Compelling evidence we should invest more in research.

"Articles and ideas are only as good as the fees you can get for talking about them. They are merely billboards for the messengers." ---- Stephen Marche, a novelist, essayist and an author.

"Intellectuals have come to see their careers in capitalist terms. They seek out market niches. They compete for attention. They used to regard ideas as weapons but are now more inclined to regard their ideas as property." --- David Brooks.

"But while Africa is demanding a voice, the question remains: How can it be part of the ongoing revolution while starting with a significant delay?" www.lemonde.fr/afrique/arti...

I think @ethanz.bsky.social might have predicted via his book, 'Mistrust', about the ongoing "turmoil" that's challenging America's cherished stance - "we have strong and independent institutions, free from partisan influence."

“More politically and intellectually challenging policy solutions are likely to be necessary. One thing I can assure you, however, is that “banning open source” is neither desirable nor, if we are being truthful, possible.” www.thefai.org/posts/open-s...

Ok, quick thread on why DeepSeek is blowing up assumptions about LLMs and maybe the whole (U.S.) AI industry. DeepSeek is an AI lab funded by a Chinese hedge fund, their AI code is open source, meaning freely available to use, which most big U.S. models (aside from Meta’s) are not. That’s the start…

The release of Deepseek-R1(open source), arguably the best reasoning model at the moment, has made some academics, economists and policy analysts to question the effectiveness of US' compute export control measures. I don't know the right answer but here are the main arguments:

"In a prior time, [public] intellectuals could be judged by their output; today it is by the noise they make and the comments they generate" --- Jacob Heilbrunn, Editor, The National Interest.

Join us at our upcoming workshop at ICLR, XAI4Science: From Understanding Model Behavior to Discovering New Scientific Knwlg, Apr 27-28 submissions on a-priori (ante-hoc) & a-posteriori (post-hoc) interpretability & self-explainable models for understanding model’s behvr welcm tinyurl.com/3w8sddpm

“You can put commercial pressure, you can boycott companies, you can elect people into government, put pressure on legislation to pass certain rules. But these pressure points make only sense if the society is adequately informed and ready to be engaged with that.”

The quality of America's foreign policy discussion has demonstrably deteriorated over the last thirty years. --- Publisher and Chairman of the National Interest's advisory group.

The argument that the TikTok ban by the US gov't serves as a precedent for other countries, esp in Africa, is a bit "unsettling" for me. A. It shifts the focus from discussing the digital right violations of the US B. It undermines the digital sovereignty of other nations.

“Quite clearly, knowledge had become a pliable instrument in the hands of power and intellectuals had lost control of that which constitutes their raison d’être.” …. Excerpts from Dan Ohwang’s “Kenyan Intellectuals and the Political Realm.

"External actors have no incentive, inclination, or obligation to imagine an expansive future for you." www.semafor.com/article/01/1...

Unemployed African youth and "necessity entrepreneurship" 👇🏿 "Though there are African entrepreneurs founding innovative startups in everything from fintech to commercial agriculture, running a business is often the result of desperation, not choice." www.economist.com/special-repo...

"The criticism revolved around one point: Nigeria must address fundamental issues such as reliable electricity, food security, and poverty. To critics, pushing an AI agenda without fixing the basics puts the cart before the horse." techcabal.com/2024/02/26/n...

The promise of digital entrepreneurship to economically liberate African unemployed youth seems like a false positive. The entire entrepreneurship ideology is premised on desperation, low wages and short-term employment. www.economist.com/special-repo...

A surprisingly common misconception is that Wikipedia text surfaces via some kind of free-for-all majority vote, like community notes. That's not accurate at all - it's a supervised peer review process; edits get accepted by the community through a fairly rigorous process of fact-checking & debate!

I just finished reading @semafor.com's compilation of experts' predictions of what 2025 will look like in Africa. Not surprised that not a single expert predicted strategic focus or investment in AI. The priorities of the continent differ sharply from the global agenda.

"Kaplan previously served as deputy chief of staff in the White House during the George W Bush administration, and is known for handling the company’s relations with Republicans." www.ft.com/content/e5fe...

"Perhaps the study of long-term AI risk has reached the stage that chlorofluorocarbon studies had reached by 1980, and we will soon learn that the challenge is not as difficult to overcome as the pessimists have feared." www.weforum.org/stories/2014...

Industry, not academia, dominates the impact of scientific publications on generative AI. Even though academia leads on the number of publications, industry leads on the number of citations. Between 2010-2023, Gen AI publications from Alphabet (parent company of Google) got over 47500 citations.