Microsoft has announced the expansion of its AI for Good Research Lab to Cairo and Nairobi. The expansion aims to close the climate data divide by researching and developing AI machine learning in areas in Africa worst affected by the climate crisis. Africa’s Climate Crisis Research has revealed that high climate risk correlates with income and health inequalities. The findings also coincide with the fact that two billion people in the Global South were found to be living in some of the most climate-risk areas between 2008 and 2018. Despite Africa contributing less
The Congressional Black Caucus Institute (CBCI) is launching a new AI tech platform that matches public policy corporations with CBCI-vetted job seekers. Founded in 2000, the CBCI is a nonprofit social welfare organization that aims to educate and empower the African American community around issues that impact it the most. The CBCI’s latest initiative, the Career Placement Initiative (CPI), aims to diversify hiring in the public policy space. The Career Placement Initiative So how does it work? Employers bulk upload communications, legal, public policy, and government relations job openings to the platform. The
Black couple DeMario and Dawn Nicole McIlawin are the creators behind Skilldora. This Black-owned edtech startup is one of the first e-learning platforms to embrace “digitally created humans,” also known as AI instructors. Skilldora has partnered with Israel-based company, D-ID, to accelerate academic learning for the next generation. According to Yahoo Finance, edtech startups have helped boost the educational sector. Online education is now one of the most effective and fastest ways for modern learners to learn seamlessly. Skilldora is on a mission to revolutionize the education system by becoming
Black-owned health startup Ubenwa uses artificial intelligence to detect early diseases in babies and their cries. The startup’s learning system analyzes the amplitude of a baby’s cry and uses cutting-edge AI to diagnose infants up to six months old. By analyzing the frequency patterns of a baby’s cry, the AI-powered software picks up on brain and lung conditions in young infants. Communicating with babies Ubenwa was co-founded in 2017 by Charles Onu, Samantha Latremouille, and Innocent Udeogu. The startup combines AI techniques with medical expertise to detect breathing conditions and
91-year-old James Earl Jones has officially retired his voice as the iconic Darth Vader from Star Wars and handed it over to artificial intelligence. Jones, who has voiced the villain Darth Vader since 1977, has officially signed over archived recordings of his voice to Ukraine-based startup, Respeecher, who will be working to recreate the actor’s voice using artificial intelligence. In an interview with Vanity Fair, supervising editor Matthew Wood said the actor “was looking into winding down this particular character” after playing the role for nearly 50 years. The Ukrainian startup
Despite the controversy surrounding its facial recognition software, Clearview A.I. has found a new home amongst public defenders. The move, described as a “P.R. stunt to try to push back against the negative publicity,” has begun allowing public defenders to access its facial recognition database, which holds more than 20 billion facial images. The controversy explained Earlier this year, the controversial facial recognition program found itself amid legal drama after being fined more than £7.5 million by the U.K.’s privacy watchdog. The fine came after a few senators called on federal agencies
One young company attracting interest in the field of autonomous driving is Heex Technologies, a POC-led startup offering a “smart data management platform” to help carmakers sift through the sea of data required to put autonomous vehicles on the road. CEO and co-founder Bruno Mendes Da Silva was initially focused on solving the pollution crisis before this idea. “My original focus was on fighting pollution — I first launched an electric vehicle rental service after an academic exchange in Shanghai. [It was then that] I realized there are more problems
Capitol Music Group has severed ties with the FN Meka project following accusations that the AI rapper perpetuated racial stereotypes online. FN Meka, a virtual “robot rapper,” created by the founders of Factory New, a “first of its kind, next-generation music company specializing in virtual beings.” In a short time, FN Meka amassed over 10 million followers on TikTok and 500,000 monthly Spotify subscribers based on music and lyrics generated by an AI based on popular rap music. The robot rapper, which industry professionals described as a “preview of what’s
If you’re a person with dark skin, you may be more likely than your white friends to get hit by a self-driving car, according to a 2019 study out of the Georgia Institute of Technology. That’s because automated vehicles may better detect pedestrians with lighter skin tones. The study’s authors started out with a simple question: How accurately do state-of-the-art object-detection models, like those used by self-driving cars, detect people from different demographic groups? To find out, they looked at a large dataset of images that contain pedestrians. They divided up the
As cryptocurrency adoption gains steam on the African continent, it will be important for potential investors—and ultimately, regulators—to learn from the scams that have come before. Some high-profile examples of these scams include; back in 2019, Uganda’s Dunamiscoin Resources closed suddenly with $2.7 million in investor money. Dunamiscoin Resources had taken money from more than 4,000 people, promising them returns of 30% returns in 21 days by investing it in bitcoin. The returns never came. Kenya Another is Velox 10 Global, a pyramid scheme with roots in Brazil, in which Kenyans lost
