AI for the Global South
Chirantan Chatterjee
Professor of Dev-Econ, Innovation & Global Health (U-Sussex) | Visiting Faculty (Max Planck, Eccles U-Utah) | Former Fellow (Hoover-Stanford) | Former Faculty (IIMA, IIMB, ISB - India) | PhD (Carnegie Mellon) | FRSA, UK
Who is going to be a voice of AI for the Global South? Or if you don't like the word, let's say for Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs).
Looking at Bletchley Park events this week, and my recent trips to China, India or in conversations with former students from Mexico, South Africa, Nigeria, Indonesia, Egypt, Pakistan or Bangladesh, that's a question which comes to my mind.
Are we repeating the same mistake with AI, that we did with climate change and COP involving LMICs much later, turning it into a US versus THEM battle?
And what might be the nature of challenges AI poses for LMICs? It is already abundantly clear that on certain margins, like in healthcare or education, AI can democratize access with suitable rail guards in these countries. But it might also impact quality of provisioning of the relevant public good & hence related outcomes.
It is also now clear that job displacement (see the counterintuitive graph below from IMF on increase in real wages across countries w/more robots in manufacturing for example) is on the mind of many in developing economies. This is especially so given their traditional labour arbitrage driven competitive national advantages. In addition, technological anxiety is something that i have seen pervasive with students be that in China or in Africa. Another important issue is trust with AI driven solutions, the ethical use of AI and by whom in institutionally fragile contexts with authoritarian governments.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Ask your LMIC located friends or their social networks worldwide, and this is what you may hear, similar to what my students are telling me as an academic with a global audience at U-Sussex.
Then offcourse there is plain ignorance. Ah, that's a Western wave and fad, this too shall pass, or we have more pressing problems in poverty, war, agriculture, food systems or climate change and institutional capture that we have to deal with; that is a quip not so unheard of if you nudge them too.
Overall, it's time to give the Global South a voice in International AI conversations, now rather than later, in a more inclusive grassroots driven way, such that their customized challenges can also form use cases for efficiencies which AI can bring to our digital futures, and that too sustainably at scale.
Knock, knock today's Codebreakers at Bletchley, are you listening? :)
Senior Policy Manager - Digital Research Infrastructure | Archaeology enthusiast
1yGreat piece, and as we talked, we must do something about it!
Analyst at RAND Europe; Associate researcher at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU)
1yGood article, thanks for writing - lots of food for thought!
International Development Research | Public Policy | Politics | University of Sussex & Tata Institute of Social Sciences Alumni
1yBrilliant insights! Prof. Chirantan Chatterjee
Corporate Relations Officer | SRHR, Social Inclusion and Gender Specialist | International Development Professional | South Asian & Transnational Feminist
1yChirantan Chatterjee Thank you for writing this engaging piece Sir. Your discussion on the importance of promoting AI voices from the global south is both relevant and compelling. Your points emphasize the necessity of actively incorporating these voices into the broader AI discourse rather than perpetuating their exclusion. Thank you for shedding light on this critical issue.