AI and inequality: Women most likely to be affected in Africa, expert says

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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.

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