What is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI: The African Edge?
When I wrote the primary version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI in 2023, its subtitle was A Handbook For All. That was each a pure and apparent theme, given the utter newness of generative synthetic intelligence on the time, and the seismic shock it delivered to the enterprise, tutorial and shopper worlds.
Two years later, all these worlds have moved on, and a much bigger image has emerged. While many nonetheless want a information to the fundamentals of AI, the sequel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI: The African Edge, steps previous the introductions and into the areas the place AI is already in use. It is a tour by means of African industries, professions, and communities which have moved from experimentation to integration. The construction is a sequence of encounters, every chapter centred on an individual, a task, or a sector, exhibiting what AI seems to be like when it meets want and ingenuity.
From handbook to map
Each chapter additionally builds a bit of a bigger map. The “African Edge” of the title is each a slogan and a recurring situation. A mobile-first digital panorama, a younger and related inhabitants, and the necessity to work with constrained sources create a setting the place AI is commonly examined in conditions international suppliers don’t anticipate. That can imply chatbots fluent in indigenous languages earlier than they seem in international platforms, or agricultural fashions tuned to microclimates that haven’t any equal in Europe or North America.
This version’s chapters are populated with coaches, farmers, coders, artists, executives, and engineers whose use of AI is particular, and embedded of their work. It treats AI much less as an summary pressure and extra as a element inside methods already in movement.
My intention is that, by the tip of the journey, the reader has a mapped view of AI throughout African sectors as present-tense utility somewhat than future potential. The impact is cumulative: an account of how a world expertise is being bent, refined, and scaled to native situations, and the way these situations, in flip, are shaping the expertise.
“The African edge” seems in options that run inside obtainable bandwidth, match monetary realities, communicate indigenous languages, and reply to environmental situations. The result’s a residing atlas, charted with the assistance of guides whose work hyperlinks the sensible wants of the current to the chances of the longer term.
These examples emphasise the perception that AI isn’t solely a matter of expertise:
Sport as a case research in margins
The opening chapter, The Coach, goes behind the scenes of the Springboks’ 2019 and 2023 Rugby World Cup campaigns below Rassie Erasmus. The victories have been slender, however the preparation was large in scope. Live GPS feeds tracked participant motion and depth. Predictive fatigue fashions flagged when a participant’s output was more likely to dip. Match analytics knowledgeable substitutions that shifted the steadiness in three one-point wins in 2023. An in-depth interview with Erasmus reveals how knowledge added one other lens, alongside bodily conditioning and tactical drills, to make selections below stress.
From beehives to knowledge
The Beekeeper leads into fields alive with each nature and knowledge. In Reading, England, I used to be first uncovered to hives that carry embedded sensors that feed temperature, humidity, and bee-activity knowledge into evaluation platforms. In Africa, comparable methods join small-scale and industrial beekeepers to environmental knowledge, bettering pollination outcomes and crop yields. In Kenya and South Africa, early-warning alerts permit intervention earlier than illness spreads, safeguarding each bees and the farmers who depend on them.
This thread carries into The Farmer, the place climate-linked planting algorithms match crop selections and sowing schedules to shifting rainfall patterns. Image-recognition instruments detect pests earlier than they unfold. The focus is on instruments tailored to African soils, climate cycles, and infrastructure realities.
Creative industries in transition
The Artist strikes from theatre phases in Cape Town to galleries and style studios in East and West Africa. Performances layer human voice with machine-generated harmonies, whereas dancers set off AI-driven rhythms by means of motion. In African inventive areas, illustrators use AI for speedy color research earlier than committing brush to canvas, and designers generate textile patterns that match native tastes. The instruments act as collaborators, extending the vary of concepts artists can discover in a single session.
The Voicekeeper captures the sound of Africa by means of language fashions and speech-recognition methods educated on native knowledge. In South Africa, Lelapa AI pioneers small language fashions. Projects in Kenya combine Kiswahili into AI-driven translation and transcription companies, enabling a brand new wave of digital merchandise that talk on to their customers in acquainted languages.
Why does it matter?
Anyone who has learn The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (the inspiration for the title of this guide) is aware of that the reply to “the question of life, the universe and everything” is the quantity 42. They simply don’t know what the query is. The subtext of his collection, for these frightened of the query, is: ”Don’t panic.” Following the discharge of the primary version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI, I used to be requested to offer quite a few talks on the subject at company conferences and faculties, on radio and TV, and even to retired individuals. The phrase that stored developing in viewers and interview questions was “scary”. I realised that “Don’t panic” was the proper underlying message for any information to AI.
And by casting the narrative as a journey information, and telling it by means of the roles of these utilizing AI, it’s made clear that AI is already a part of our on a regular basis lives, if we solely lookup and recognise it.
Where to purchase The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI: The African Edge?
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI: The African Edge is printed by Pan Macmillan and is out there in all South African bookstores at a retail worth starting from R330 to R360.
*Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, and writer of the brand new guide, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge”.