The Principal Investigator of the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Lab (RAIL), Prof Jerry John Kponyo is advocating for affordable AI solutions to benefit the underprivileged.

Speaking at the 7th annual Black in AI workshop in New Orleans, USA, he observed the tendencies of AI solutions to widen the already existing socioeconomic gap.

“We should not be driven by profits when deploying AI solutions but should consider the public good of AI solutions and make them accessible to the underprivileged.

“AI solutions can potentially revolutionise various industries, but their high cost and lack of accessibility can limit their impact. It is important to explore innovative ways to reduce the cost of AI solutions while maintaining their effectiveness and reliability. This ensures that AI benefits everyone and not the privileged few,” he expressed. 

He reiterated RAIL’s mandate of nurturing local talent with a focus on women in technology in response to the capacity requirement of AI in the sub-region.

Prof Kponyo highlighted some ongoing RAIL initiatives on Afrocentric datasets.

He mentioned the Plant Disease Detector, which detects and provides remedies to crop diseases in the native languages of farmers, the Rare Disease Detector, AI-powered Assistive Devices for the differently abled and the FACETS (https://facets.netlify.app/) Framework.

Dr Kponyo therefore called for a collaboration among key stakeholders to gather Afrocentric datasets to train AI models to solve African problems.

“The need for Afrocentric datasets is to ensure fair and accurate predictions and solutions that work for Africans. This also prevents social biases and provides trustworthiness and confidence in the AI models,” he said.