Today is the 12th anniversary of 369 Eritrean refugees who drowned in Lampedusa (Italy) exactly 12 years ago. As our researcher and refugee advocate Meron Estefanos wrote, one of them was 22 years old and was giving birth as she was drowning. Her body was later found with an umbilical cord attached to her baby. In this possible futures entry, @npub1zmkm...6wm0 imagines a future where the families of the disappeared find closure.
DAIR (Distributed AI Research Institute)
Closure for Families of the Missing
Behind every name is a family torn apart, a void where a loved one should be.
“These are really big, scary problems that are complex & challenging to address — it’s so easy to gravitate towards fantastical thinking & wanting a one-size-fits-all global solution. I think it’s the reason that so many people turn to cults & all sorts of really out there beliefs when the future feels scary & uncertain [...] this is not different than that. They just have billions of dollars to actually enact their ideas.” @npub19u84...pjzk , lead research engineer at the @npub1mmfh...2mx9
AP News
How Silicon Valley is using religious language to talk about AI
As the rapid, unregulated development of artificial intelligence continues, the language people in Silicon Valley use to describe it is becoming in...
"“AI isn’t magic; it’s a pyramid scheme of human labor,” said Adio Dinika, a researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute based in Bremen, Germany. “These raters are the middle rung: invisible, essential and expendable.”
the Guardian
How thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart
Contracted AI raters describe grueling deadlines, poor pay and opacity around work to make chatbots intelligent
In this article for Africa in Fact, Adio writes: “The choice facing Africa is stark: continue as a data colony providing cheap labour for surveillance tools that serve foreign interests, or assert digital sovereignty by developing governance frameworks that prioritise African lives over foreign profits. ”
Africa in Fact
AI surveillance and data colonialism shape African conflicts  - Africa in Fact
On 3 November 2021, Professor Meareg Amare, a respected chemistry academic at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, was gunned down o...