, there are drones monitoring weeds; in Mauritius, there are computers crunching health data for better outcomes for patients; and in Nairobi, surveillance systems impose a modicum of order on the chaotic traffic.
Ahead of the summit, the Guardian is looking at different aspects of AI, how it already affects our lives – and what might come next.. Ghanaian cashew farmers use unmanned aerial vehicles to detect disease by collecting data from leaves, stems and trunks of cashew trees, allowing swift detection of symptoms before they become visible and lead to serious crop damage. In Rwanda, AI efficiently schedules the delivery of medicine to patients in remote areas by similar drones.
This urgent requirement for more AI places African nations in a double bind, experts say. Solutions using AI are acutely needed but are slowed by a low level of skills, digital infrastructure, internet penetration and investment in research, which could be alleviated if AI was more widespread. There is also often a lack of high-quality data to allow AI programmes to operate effectively and appropriately. Much software has been developed for the global north and may not be accurate in Africa.
There are also concerns about the impact of AI-generated or AI-targeted disinformation, and the challenge posed to often weak regulatory regimes. Though news reports have focused on major actors such as Russia and their use of disinformation for political ends, smaller sources of false information can also have a significant effect where reliable news sources are rare and moderation by, which are difficult to tell from authentic images, sound and text.
Many point to uses such as autonomous weapons systems. Drones have already been widely used in conflicts across the continent. Some have raised the nightmarish prospect of swarms of heavily armed automated drones that are supposed to be able to distinguish legitimate targets such as combatants from civilians but in reality rarely discriminate.