Is AI creating a new, but different, scramble for Africa?
The scramble for Africa describes the period from 1880ish to WW1 where European colonial powers scrambled to stake claims to natural resources on the African continent.
That scramble explains the modern borders of African nations, why European languages are official languages for almost all of African's 54 nations, and why transportation infrastructure through the interior of the continent is sparse (when you setup systems of resource extraction, you build interior railroads and roads as needed to get the stuff out and no more).
This article by Scott Timcke of Research ICT Africa gives me pause.
A lot of money is going to change hands as we move further and further into this AI revolution.
And, from the article...
"Turning to labour concerns, across the continent there are indicators that the future of AI related work in Africa will likely be click-workers doing data cleaning and labelling. As infrastructure expands, and confronted with poor employment prospects, young people across Africa, will likely participate in the global gig economy, like completing microtasks on online platforms. This kind of granular sub-contracting work presents significant challenges, for example, low wages, repetitive tasks, the real prospect of AI managers, and the lack of access to essential social safety nets.".
I find it hard to disagree with that.
But will we continue the patterns of resources extraction, this time extracting what we might call "data cleanup and categorizing"?
It seems to me that if Europe wants fewer African migrants showing up (and the US wants fewer central American migrants), the answer is to help develop their economies similar to how the economies of Europe and Japan were developed after WW2.
And a focus on resource extraction does not do that.
https://lnkd.in/gsgW_gw7
