DeepSeek’s AI is cheap. Is this a game-changer for African startups?

Catherine Nzuki is joined by Dr. Chinasa T. Okolo, a fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation in the Governance Studies program at Brookings and a recent computer science Ph.D. graduate from Cornell University. Dr. Okolo provides an overview of Africa’s AI industry (1:54); DeepSeek and what it means for AI startups (6:40); common misconceptions about AI development (7:54); how to make AI safer for the global majority (14:22); the AI safety landscape in Africa (16:52); developing benchmarks to measure AI safety in Africa (19:05); why reforming existing data governance is a pathway to AI regulation (21:50); ethical approaches to developing language models (25:00); the exploitation of workers that train and label AI models (27:00); and leveraging available language models to build African language models (35:00).  Dr. Okolo’s AI safety initiative: A new writing series: Re-envisioning AI safety through global majority perspectives. February 19 event on AI Safety at Brookings: Globalizing Perspectives on AI Safety

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Fearless music activists. Savvy tech entrepreneurs. Social disrupters. Into Africa shatters the narratives that dominate U.S. perceptions of Africa. Host Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, Africa program director and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington D.C., sits down with policymakers, journalists, academics and other trailblazers in African affairs to shine a spotlight on the faces spearheading cultural, political, and economic change on the continent.