AU AI Working Group

Trustworthy & Responsible AI; Adequate infrastructure for building data centers, etc. Recently, Kenya pulled the plug due to this shortfall; Empowerment, promotion, preservation & revitalization of African Indigenous, culture & heritage by utilize Natural Language Processing & Small Language Models. Organizations such as Lelapa.AI, Masakhane & Deep Learning Indaba are already achieving this; Sovereignty; Inclusion; AI Governance Reforms

• Safe, secure and trustworthy AI
• AI capacity-building
• Social, economic, ethical, cultural, linguistic and technical implications of AI
• Transparency, accountability, and human oversight

Safety & Trustworthy AI • issues of biases & harms, especially towards people of colour need to be addressed. Comprehensive bias impact assessments are needed as well as transparency; AI capacity * digital inclusion, knowledge transfer & digital literacy from formative school years is key; AI in our mother tongues for inclusion; Social, economic, ethical, cultural, linguistic and technical implications of AI • Empowerment, promotion, preservation & revitalization of African Indigenous, culture & heritage by utilize Natural Language Processing & Small Language Models. Organizations such as Lelapa.AI, Masakhane & Deep Learning Indaba are already achieving this. Alarmingly, the AU only allocated $1 million to NLP & this cause. African Languages (2000) are deemed as low-resource (under 1/3 of global total of 7000) Transparency, accountability, and human oversight * the human-in-loop is important. Minimization of rogue agents (OpenClaw), hallucinations (South Africa's withdrawn AI Draft Policy with AI generated sources). Stringent rules on accountability/liability- who's liable, the end-user, deployer or developer

Safety & Trustworthy AI • issues of biases & harms, especially towards people of colour need to be addressed. In the Financial Sector, black people get fewer loans, given low credit scores & are charged exorbitant amounts of interest; Access, cultural, linguistic and technical implications of AI • Empowerment, promotion, preservation & revitalization of African Indigenous, culture & heritage by utilize Natural Language Processing & Small Language Models. This includes access to the physically impaired. An organization, called Blind South Africa recently won its case at the Constitutional Court (Apex Court) for adaptation & reproduction of books from print to Braille Transparency, accountability, and human oversight , capacity building & collaboration * as aforementioned, the human-in-loop is important. Hallucinations have cost South Africa to withdraw its AI Draft Policy with AI generated sources). This also goes to the heart of capacity & collaborations. Government shouldn't work in SILOS

Knowledge transfer; Responsible & Trustworthy AI governance; Digital inclusion; Adequate infrastructure; Sovereignty; AI Policy reforms; Cultural, language & heritage promotion;

Private, Public partnership for digital & public procurement; Establishment of grassroots organizations, such as Masakhane; AI centers for the marginalized, physically impaired, etc

Collaborations, knowledge transfer, etc. in person & virtually

The global South They could be included by lowering exorbitant visa fees, relaxing visa requirements

• Masakhane Clinic- Grassroots AI organization assisting students & young people
• Deep Learning Indaba- giving young Africans a platform to show case their AI skills & experience
• GeekCulcha
• Lelapa.AI