AI for Education in Africa

The Rundown will be heavily focused on specific AI issues facing Africa and other emerging markets. Please check out our site and know that we are building, with stuff like this in mind.

At the moment, we are building our community, ensuring we are solving the right problems, understanding our potential users (survey coming soon!) and building prototypes.

How can artificial intelligence be applied in education, in the African context?

As the first African country to implement a national AI policy, Rwanda leads the way in exploring the potential of artificial intelligence to revolutionize education on the continent. From personalized learning to data-driven insights, AI offers promising solutions to the challenges faced by educational systems in Africa, such as high student-teacher ratios and limited resources.

A red flag comes from many experts who say that the successful adoption of AI in African education requires careful consideration of cultural context, data representation, and inclusion. Data training sets for LLMs are from Western or Asian perspectives. Rwanda is looking at how to proactively address these concerns, and by leveraging AI to automate mundane tasks, educators can focus on delivering the best learning outcomes for students and shaping the future of education in Africa.

Recommended watch for more.

A song for my subscribers

Music just makes everything better. I found a new platform called suno.ai where you can simply write one line of a song you want written and the genre you would like it sung in.

Suno.AI

Hit “create” and... boom. It’s actually quite cool. It’s free for up to 50 credits. This was my prompt for a song dedicated to you, my dearest Substack subscribers.

Using the 1980s music genre, write a song thanking my newsletter subscribers on a platform called ‘Substack’ for their support and encouragement. Encourage paid subscriptions in order to support me and the team, but do not pressure them.

Here’s what I made for you! I know it’s cheesy. Hopefully it will make you smile.

Sous-Chef Suno AI

How to spot AI-generated deep-fake images

In the early days, fact-checkers pointed out images with obvious errors, like hands with six fingers or eyeglasses that have differently shaped lenses. But as AI has improved, it has become a lot harder. Still, there are some things to look for.

• AI deepfake photos, especially of people, have an electronic sheen to them, an aesthetic sort of smoothing effect that leaves skin looking incredibly polished.
• Check the consistency of shadows and lighting. Often, the subject is in clear focus and appears convincingly lifelike, but elements in the backdrop might not be realistic
• Face-swapping is one of the most common deep-fake methods. Experts advise looking closely at the edges of the face. Does the facial skin tone match the rest of the head or the body? Are the edges of the face sharp or blurry?
• If looking at a video where speech has been altered, do their lip movements match the audio perfectly?
• Teeth. Cybersecurity company Norton says algorithms might not be sophisticated enough yet to generate individual teeth, so a lack of outlines for individual teeth could be a clue.

Another approach is to use AI to fight AI. Microsoft has developed an authenticator tool that can analyze photos or videos to give a confidence score on whether they've been manipulated. Chipmaker Intel’s FakeCatcher uses algorithms to analyze an image’s pixels to determine if it’s real or fake.

Business and comms leaders, this is for you.

Business leaders are considering the transformative impact of AI on their industries both now and in the future. Join the Leading with AI conference livestream on May 7 to learn from thought leaders and experts in their fields. Tune into the Digital Data Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard Leading with AI conference on May 7 to learn how your organization can capitalize on digital transformation. Leading with AI is chaired by Harvard Business School professors Karim Lakhani, Tsedal Neeley, and Mitchell Weiss and is presented in partnership with the Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard, a pioneering hub dedicated to the study of transformative technologies.

Learn more here. I’ll be speaking at this conference.

AI Transparency Statement

Ethics. We really liked this transparency statement guide. It’s from an author who has just finished a book. Comms teams and leads should be thinking about the same. Journos too.

These past few months, while publicizing my new book about AI, God-Like, I’ve tried not to hear in those same words an undertone of accusation: “Where do you get the time?” Meaning, you must have had help from ChatGPT, right? The truth is, it is becoming harder and harder to resist help from AI. My word processor now offers to have a go at the next paragraph - Kester Brewin

He’s got four areas to think about when considering any transparency statement:

• Has any text been generated using AI?
• Has any text been improved using AI? E.g., AI systems like Grammarly that offer suggestions to reorder sentences or words to increase a clarity score. (I use QuillBot.)
• Has any text been suggested using AI? E.g., asking ChatGPT for an outline, or having the next paragraph drafted based on previous text.
• Has the text been corrected using AI, and if so, have suggestions for spelling and grammar been accepted or rejected based on human discretion?

AI Assists: Claude for headline generation and tightening one paragraph; QuillBot for grammar and spelling; Suno AI for music generation.