Mutuma Mathiu: Let’s master tech before it does us in

This week, I designed and hosted my first ever website, using artificial intelligence (AI) on 10Web, all on my own, and it took me under 30 minutes. And perhaps by so doing I took the first step in protecting the survival of my great-grandchildren—and yours.

The world is going to change dramatically over the next 50 years, driven by two technological innovations: AI and quantum computing. You saw in the news that Google’s new quantum computer is 241 million times faster than the one it released in 2019 and can complete a computational task that would have taken 47 years in six seconds.

The decisions that Africans take now will determine whether we achieve the rosy picture recently drawn by a US investment bank which predicted that five countries in Africa—Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, South Africa and Ghana—will be among economic giants by 2075.

According to that prediction, Nigeria will be the fifth-largest economy with a GDP of $13.1 trillion after China, India, the United States and Indonesia. Generally, the Goldman Sachs reading of the tea leaves shows North America and Europe declining and Asia, Africa and South America rising.

Fortune reports quote an interview with Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and now a billionaire venture capitalist, in which he discusses his somewhat optimistic ideas about AI and its impact on the future.

Basically, he believes that the economic impact of using technology is “productivity growth”—a situation where the application of a certain amount of input produces a disproportionately larger output; you get more for less.

The effect, he argues, is to give the consumer a “raise”, creating demand which then drives economic expansion.

Andreessen says in the ideal situation, artificial general intelligence, a situation where computers can do anything that human beings can, would render labour obsolete; the cost of goods would collapse, giving consumers a “cornucopia” of spending power, demand would shoot through the roof, the US economy would nova with the rate of economic growth shooting from 1.5 per cent to 100 per cent.

What do you think will happen when the rich no longer need cheap migrant labour? Especially with the rise of the right that we see in North America and Europe? When everybody in those advanced countries can have an AI assistant by their side, robots caring for the aged, sweeping the streets, picking their tomatoes, running their medical facilities and doing all those hard, poor-paying outdoor jobs, there will be a drastic decline in immigration and even less racial tolerance.

Racist billionaires could obsess more about the health of the planet and the future of their race. It’s highly unlikely that they will ignore “deplorable” Africans, coughing in smoky huts, reproducing like rats and fouling up the planet, endangering the survival of everyone. They will not need Africans for anything: Powerful satellites will scan the continent for minerals robot miners will extract.

The “climate abortions” that Vilhelm Junnila, the Finnish minister for the economy who just resigned, proposed in Parliament that some type of depopulation of Africa to allegedly save the planet might become a more common refrain.

AI stands to wipe out Kenya’s competitive advantage and key export—labour. The solution is, of course, to take ownership of AI and use it to hack economic growth. To me, our digital policy looks like those trousers with pleats and turn-ups—outdated. We are still putting the little money we have in infrastructure rather than content.

Elon Musk’s Starlink has 4,700 satellites in Low Earth orbit with authorisation to launch 12,000 and plans for 30,000 more. They want to take cheap, high-speed internet to the remotest parts of the earth’s surface. Right now, the cost of connectivity in Kenya is Sh15,699 for 100mbps by one of the leading providers. The smallest Starlink package, even with the service still in the testing stage, is priced at Sh14,960 for 250mbps and likely to come way down.

The priority should be to create the most digitally advanced labour force in the world. That is not as difficult as many might think, it need not take long and it is not prohibitively expensive. No child should move to the next stage without digital qualifications.

Secondly, Kenya must create a more diverse and multicultural public service and political class. Our talent, imagination and skill pool is now confined to a largely rural African elite which is more serious about buying expensive suits and watches than changing the world.

Thirdly, today, Kenyans are paying $118 for a barrel of oil; the world price is $74. Our currency is barrelling downhill and our debts, most of them suspected to be fake, are ballooning. And we have started killing one another over some buffoonery or other in Sondu and deploying anti-terrorism soldiers against protesters. Somehow, the capacity of the Kenya to hire leaders must improve exponentially, quickly.

No country can develop with these distortions. If Kenya does not master AI and corruption, there may be no great-grandchildren for us. w

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