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It is true that Africans can band together in movements, that's how they forced Europeans out. It also true, those 'collective movements' don't necessarily res

It is true that Africans can band together in movements, that's how they forced Europeans out. It also true, those 'collective movements' don't necessarily result in good outcomes. Look at Kenya on the map. To the east is Somalia, to the north is Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, all countries locked in civil war between different 'collective movements'. The big opportunity for Africa in the AI era, is to use AIs to serve local healthcare/education/software development needs. There weren't many teachers/doctors/SE engineers etc to begin with, so they have little to lose from mass deploying AI. I'm not sure unionising to get higher wages from moderation work will make a big impact. I am really curious to see the counterargument here, why will unionisation work in this case?

tysam_and 3y ago
I can't claim expertise on Africa, something I would add though is that many Africans from Kenya, for example, that I've talked to, generally blame British imperialism for many of the problems today. Because they drew country borders willy-nilly around tribes, sometimes even splitting tribes between countries, and culturally the tribes only vote for their own, the countries are ruled by majority tribes which become the rich and leading class. Ethiopia has this problem too for example. Then tribalism + continued tensions just keep going from there. Of course there is the rampant corruption. There are also collective community policing strategies too in some communities, for example. In the African Union I have high hopes for the continent, but still I think there is a a very large, very large, very large barrier to overcome because of the infighting. As far as the unionization, I think if handled right it can have lower downsides for the amount of bargaining power that it provides. It seems that a lot of African culture thrives on ad-hoc person-to-person movements, so this feels very much within the lines of what could work in Africa. But tribalism inside of each country and between countries could still keep any local movements from having a larger impact within the continent even if, say, a local union is successful. In any case, it basically moves the Nash Equilibrium but doesn't necessarily abolish it. If handled poorly, or if the company retaliates, then sure, if the company is willing to run the press gauntlet and such. But at the very least, I have hopes. Also I know of the conflict in Somalia, Ethiopia, South & North Sudan, etc. I haven't checked in on Kenya in a while. I hope all is well over there, it is generally a very beautiful and safe country with a few notable exceptions. Has something happened, or is it in the list mainly due to proximity to the conflict (or something like that?) :'( </3
- anonylizard 3y ago
  Kenya is a true bright spot (and really the only one) in the horn of africa region. They have typical internal tensions, but they are a real democracy, I don't think they are interested in civil war given their neighbour's poor examples. That being said, "Africans from Kenya, for example, that I've talked to, generally blame British imperialism for many of the problems today" is a typical and unimpressive mentality. Tribal conflicts existed way before the British did. For example, Sudan existed before the British came, and the Arab vs black fights in Sudan is not a British creation. Somalia is mono-ethnic, doesn't stop it from endless wars. Ethiopia was not colonised beyond a short Italian occupation, their current civil war is still the result of ethnic conflicts. African unity is also a questionable concept. West, Central, East and Southern Africa are four different continents in terms of culture, ethnicities, climate, and size. The only consensus is 'no-changing-borders-by-force', yes, they know that those colonial imposed borders is the only thing keeping africa from falling into a bloodbath free-for-all. That's why AI is really africa's greatest hope. They have not invested much into white collar knowledge and industries, and AI allows them to leapfrog much of it. It'll be very interesting to see how the african public reacts to AI.
  - tysam_and 3y ago
    I really and truly hope so. I have a lot to learn about the continent, and I love it much. I've done some work on significantly reducing the experiment cost for small experiments on GPT and convnet models (WikiText and CIFAR10, respectively), and one of the big things that I thought of was how it could help Africans in AI specifically because it allows for good research test signals but isn't prohibitively expensive/slow. On A100s this particular CIFAR10 network trains in under 7 seconds for example and the network (fp16) is <10 MB IIRC, the relative gains over other previous training speeds is even better on older cards IIRC due to it being pretty memory limited at this point. It could be used as a backbone in other networks and is nice because it is good to run experiments on and also can directly deploy at scale pretty easily. In my experience, cycle time is actually one of the biggest resources for most smaller research initiatives. I just haven't had the opportunity to talk to anyone yet to see if there's a way that I could interface with the African AI community over it. I don't know how Colab works but they work pretty darn well in the free version of Colab, and both are annotated to help a moderately well-motivated learner pick up some of the ropes themselves. It seems like you know a little about the space. If you do know anyone or have any pointers as to where I could/should look to talk to people about this, please do let me know! I think OSS can do a lot and would love to give a bit to the community, for sure.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> To the east is Somalia, to the north is Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, all countries locked in civil war between different 'collective movements' Even my limited knowledge of the situation is enough to tell that this is neither historically accurate nor a fair portrayal. This does not sound like a good faith argument. No collective movements means no American revolution, no Civil war, no French Revolution, no Glorious revolution in Britain. We'd still bow down to Kings and have slavery

tysam_and 3y ago

I can't claim expertise on Africa, something I would add though is that many Africans from Kenya, for example, that I've talked to, generally blame British imperialism for many of the problems today. Because they drew country borders willy-nilly around tribes, sometimes even splitting tribes between countries, and culturally the tribes only vote for their own, the countries are ruled by majority tribes which become the rich and leading class. Ethiopia has this problem too for example. Then tribalism + continued tensions just keep going from there. Of course there is the rampant corruption. There are also collective community policing strategies too in some communities, for example. In the African Union I have high hopes for the continent, but still I think there is a a very large, very large, very large barrier to overcome because of the infighting. As far as the unionization, I think if handled right it can have lower downsides for the amount of bargaining power that it provides. It seems that a lot of African culture thrives on ad-hoc person-to-person movements, so this feels very much within the lines of what could work in Africa. But tribalism inside of each country and between countries could still keep any local movements from having a larger impact within the continent even if, say, a local union is successful. In any case, it basically moves the Nash Equilibrium but doesn't necessarily abolish it. If handled poorly, or if the company retaliates, then sure, if the company is willing to run the press gauntlet and such. But at the very least, I have hopes. Also I know of the conflict in Somalia, Ethiopia, South & North Sudan, etc. I haven't checked in on Kenya in a while. I hope all is well over there, it is generally a very beautiful and safe country with a few notable exceptions. Has something happened, or is it in the list mainly due to proximity to the conflict (or something like that?) :'( </3

anonylizard 3y ago
Kenya is a true bright spot (and really the only one) in the horn of africa region. They have typical internal tensions, but they are a real democracy, I don't think they are interested in civil war given their neighbour's poor examples. That being said, "Africans from Kenya, for example, that I've talked to, generally blame British imperialism for many of the problems today" is a typical and unimpressive mentality. Tribal conflicts existed way before the British did. For example, Sudan existed before the British came, and the Arab vs black fights in Sudan is not a British creation. Somalia is mono-ethnic, doesn't stop it from endless wars. Ethiopia was not colonised beyond a short Italian occupation, their current civil war is still the result of ethnic conflicts. African unity is also a questionable concept. West, Central, East and Southern Africa are four different continents in terms of culture, ethnicities, climate, and size. The only consensus is 'no-changing-borders-by-force', yes, they know that those colonial imposed borders is the only thing keeping africa from falling into a bloodbath free-for-all. That's why AI is really africa's greatest hope. They have not invested much into white collar knowledge and industries, and AI allows them to leapfrog much of it. It'll be very interesting to see how the african public reacts to AI.
- tysam_and 3y ago
  I really and truly hope so. I have a lot to learn about the continent, and I love it much. I've done some work on significantly reducing the experiment cost for small experiments on GPT and convnet models (WikiText and CIFAR10, respectively), and one of the big things that I thought of was how it could help Africans in AI specifically because it allows for good research test signals but isn't prohibitively expensive/slow. On A100s this particular CIFAR10 network trains in under 7 seconds for example and the network (fp16) is <10 MB IIRC, the relative gains over other previous training speeds is even better on older cards IIRC due to it being pretty memory limited at this point. It could be used as a backbone in other networks and is nice because it is good to run experiments on and also can directly deploy at scale pretty easily. In my experience, cycle time is actually one of the biggest resources for most smaller research initiatives. I just haven't had the opportunity to talk to anyone yet to see if there's a way that I could interface with the African AI community over it. I don't know how Colab works but they work pretty darn well in the free version of Colab, and both are annotated to help a moderately well-motivated learner pick up some of the ropes themselves. It seems like you know a little about the space. If you do know anyone or have any pointers as to where I could/should look to talk to people about this, please do let me know! I think OSS can do a lot and would love to give a bit to the community, for sure.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

> To the east is Somalia, to the north is Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, all countries locked in civil war between different 'collective movements' Even my limited knowledge of the situation is enough to tell that this is neither historically accurate nor a fair portrayal. This does not sound like a good faith argument. No collective movements means no American revolution, no Civil war, no French Revolution, no Glorious revolution in Britain. We'd still bow down to Kings and have slavery