Africa Is Building an A.I. Industry That Doesn’t Look Like Silicon Valley

https://onezero.medium.com/africa-is-building-an-a-i-industry-that-doesnt-look-like-silicon-valley-72198eba706d

by imartin2k • 7 years ago

377 85 7 years ago

onezero.medium.com

holstvoogd• 7 years ago

High time, tech needs some desperately needs to diversify from the silicon valley culture.

adrianN3• 7 years ago

Offtopic: This article contains four pictures that contribute nothing to the content and weigh around 10MB. The first one takes up a whole screen of space. Why do people do this?

redact207• 7 years ago

It's probably to do with google's algo that favours a certain content-to-image ratio. Medium gives the author access to easily embeddable images that often have nothing to do with the article just so the article's not just one giant block of text.

I would have loved to have seem some photos of this industry out of Africa though.

adrianN3• 7 years ago

Ok good, but why do these pictures have to be 2-3MB each? Each one of them would have taken an hour to download just a few years ago (or today, if you live in a less well developed area of the world).

jessriedel• 7 years ago

Besides the SEO redact207 mentioned, readers are often driven away by a block of text.

ghaff• 7 years ago

And in all fairness, this isn't just a web thing. Most newspapers have historically used all manner of graphical techniques in addition to images to break up text blocks such as subheads, callouts, graphics, lines, etc. (Although, also to be fair, historically newspapers also tended to try to include images that were directly relevant to the story rather than picking random stock imagery.)

Yetanfou• 7 years ago

I'd rephrase that into skimmers are often driven away by a block of text while readers are driven away by page-filling images. There is an optimum between these two which attracts people from both sides of the divide - a few targeted images can enhance a text and make it look less imposing to skimmers.

puranjay• 7 years ago

Large blocks of text are intimidating

That said, running these images through any basic image compression utility will probably cut down the size by 50-70%

investologia• 7 years ago

The fact 4 pictures weight 10MB ;retty much tells a lot about the webmaster.

In some sites/blogs it's good to put many pictures. It really depends on your readers.

In HN people look more for content based articles and they don't care if an article is mostly text without pictures

cscurmudgeon• 7 years ago

SEO. Despite all the AI buzz, Google's search is pretty hackable with tricks like this.

egypturnash• 7 years ago

Have you ever read a “magazine”? These were pre-internet things that were printed on paper, and included text and images. Often these images were illustrations, rather than photographs. They break up the text walls, attract the eye when you’re flipping through deciding which piece to read, and create a mood.

As to why the images are so huge, well, nobody gives two shits about download size any more in a world where you’re also probably pulling down multiple megabytes of ad images and JavaScript because every damn webpage has to be an app even if it’s purely static content nowadays.

slig• 7 years ago

Because even with 100+ million of VC money [1], Medium couldn't be bothered to pay for a CDN that automatically optimizes images and/or optimize the image on their own after the user uploads it.

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organ...

Avalaxy• 7 years ago

Let's hope silicon valley doesn't get their hands on them. We need more people fixing real problems for the third world instead of solving uninteresting first world problems.

taliesinb3• 7 years ago

Great to see interest in the Indaba from the HN community! This year was a lot of fun; we had some amazing students, speakers, and tutors.

While the practical notebooks we used in 2018 were already amazing, my colleagues and I worked hard on expanding and improving them for the 2019 Indaba. In case anyone wants to check them out, here's a full list of the practicals (the links go to Google Colab notebooks)

1a: Machine Learning Fundamentals, http://bit.ly/2nfeu4W

1b: Build your own TensorFlow, http://bit.ly/2obD1rK

2a: Deep Feedforward Networks, http://bit.ly/2oQSjSQ

2b: Optimization for Deep Learning, http://bit.ly/2nqkyHB

3a: Convolutional Networks, http://bit.ly/2nqdQRX

3b: Deep Generative Models, http://bit.ly/2nnkisU

4a: Recurrent Neural Networks, http://bit.ly/2ncgYkx

4b: Reinforcement Learning, http://bit.ly/2oO4lMK

They're also available on the official github page: https://github.com/deep-learning-indaba

We'd love any feedback on the practicals to improve them for next year!

If you have some ML expertise and would like to volunteer to be a tutor at next year's Indaba, which will be held in Tunisia in late August 2020, drop me a mail at contact (at) taliesin.ai. I also encourage anyone to apply to attend as a student!

wodenokoto• 7 years ago

Are there videos like from pycon? The conference sounds really interesting

taliesinb3• 7 years ago

Yes! The videos were just updated, here is the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLICxY_yQeGYng7mbMmuZj...

light_hue_1• 7 years ago

That's great!

I don't understand the rather negative introduction in the article. Indaba seems to be about getting people up to speed with the basics of ML, NeurIPS and other ML conferences are about cutting-edge research. Both have an importance place. Why the distinction about Western vs non-Western AI?

This isn't an alternative, it's a way to bootstrap research in Africa. And that's amazing. But the narrative that there's tension between the two and that somehow African AI is "other" and won't find a place in "Western AI" when the research is world-class is totally absurd and does African researchers a massive disservice.

Yes, Africa is under-represented at international AI conferences. But that's a consequence of many things (imperialism, oppression, economics, etc.), not the somewhat-impartial double-blind review system we have.

I wish people would tell a more inclusive and positive story rather than manufacture some conflict where there is none.

thewarrior• 7 years ago

Visa policies create exclusion by their very existence. So its not entirely an unfair assumption.

For those who are unaware visa policies are extremely discriminatory to people from African countries. You will not even be granted a tourist visa or even be allowed to attend a tech conference. You are stuck where you are born.

adamsea• 7 years ago

IMHO the beginning of the article wasn't about bootstrapping research in Africa, but was about how researchers there are unable to get visas or afford to travel to AI conferences.

michaelscott2• 7 years ago

But the narrative that there's tension between the two and that somehow African AI is "other" and won't find a place in "Western AI" when the research is world-class is totally absurd and does African researchers a massive disservice.

This tension doesn't really come from the specific communities, it comes from the freedom to travel as mentioned in other comments (i.e. it's incredibly difficult not only financially but also in terms of visas and access to countries where conferences take place). That just (unintentionally or not) automatically excludes African "voices", thereby turning them into the "other".

It's therefore a little disingenuous to say that there's no conflict or that it's manufactured; any African academic or tech speaker can tell you there's plenty of conflict in simply applying for a visa to Europe, for example.

rashthedude• 7 years ago

There should be a ban on medium articles being published on hacker news.

unixhero• 7 years ago

I'd like to know why. Has it got something to do with yet another corporate entity consolidating market position and power?

sgt• 7 years ago

Medium is encouraging people to put their articles behind a paywall, so many Medium stories are inaccessible unless you log in. Many feel this goes against the spirit of blogging.

vijucat• 7 years ago

They allow a couple of articles per month before you hit a paywall. It's frustrating because there happens to be a ton of interesting content (esp. machine learning-related) on Medium and the exact same content could be in a Wordpress or other blog (with a Medium-like theme if you'd like that), and it takes a total of 5 minutes to set up a blog.

pndy• 7 years ago

While we're at this, there are other domains from which stuff is notoriously being added through a single day and which should already have some restrictions; there's difference from adding interesting content and shameless spamming or as some would prefer "content promotion".

I've joined HN in hope to see interesting IT content, not to be fed by big portals with general news from yet another side.

username90• 7 years ago

What makes it different from silicon valley? I read the whole article but couldn't find it mentioned except for the headline. Is there something I'm missing? Is it just that they aim to limit sponsorship from silicon valley giants?

scumbert• 7 years ago

They take money from the CCP instead of venture capitalists

silasdavis• 7 years ago

Do you have a source for this claim?

AFascistWorld• 7 years ago

Cheap labor abound.

xiler• 7 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18369384

losvedir• 7 years ago

That was my question, too! I was wondering if they were developing some qualitatively different form of AI that's not just, e.g., matrix multiplication or something like that. That'd be neat, but I didn't notice anything in the article about that.

It did mention a few African-specific projects: controlling malaria and identifying African wildlife. So, perhaps, it means not that the tech is different, but the applications.

visarga• 7 years ago

Exactly, it's more about applying existing AI techniques to specific African problems and bootstrapping a vibrant community.

threwawasy1228• 7 years ago

When I saw this I was expecting a anti-racist angle. Something like "In SV the white mans bias in machine learning stops minorities from being hired, yet here in Africa... "

ineedasername• 7 years ago

It's good to get away from the Silicon Valley mold. Sure it has produced many great successes, but it's only one method of going about things, with various trade-offs and failure modes. There's no reason for the model of seed-> angel-> venture-> IPO has to be repeated everywhere, a robust ecosystem of technological advancement should have more diversity than that.

MoroCode• 7 years ago

How fantastic is this. I am Egyptian working in North America. This sounds like something I would love to attend

mark_l_watson• 7 years ago

Good stuff! As part of a tour in Kenya my wife and I spent a day in a village and in addition to people’s kind generosity inviting us into their homes, the other strong impression from that day was how very happy the kids were to be in school.

I took a remote class on globalization from Wharton Business School several years ago and one of the messages was that Africa would become an economic superpower.

While much of the world has benefited from globalization, I like to see each country and region strongly maintain their own culture and national identity. I would find a world that was more or less the same to be a sad thing.

Viva Indaba!

nof1• 7 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if Africa eventually surpassed the West in AI. Often it's easier for countries and companies with less existing technological infrastructure (or baggage from the previous dominant paradigm) to ramp up on something new.

lilfrost• 7 years ago

Do you have an example?

fnbr• 7 years ago

Two examples:

- Kenya has a dominant electronic currency, M-Pesa

- South Korea rapidly developed into a globally competitive developed country, despite being poor in the middle of the 20th century (same applies to Japan, just slightly less so).

inimino• 7 years ago

This is sometimes called "leapfrogging" and one example was cell phone technology (when countries that came later to the game adopted newer and better standards).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leapfrogging

SachaMichel• 7 years ago

Surely he must mean implementation in the overall infrastructure. From my time in America is seems that overhauling systems is not popular policy at all. Unfortunately as an African myself there are larger issues than AI that need to be solved before that can even be in the periphery of something near that statement.

jorblumesea• 7 years ago

Knowledge workers aren't the same as physical infrastructure. Where you see the developing world surpass the West are things such as payment systems, cell networks, trains etc. Physical things that the West has invested in previous, where the developing world isn't hampered by the momentum of existing systems.

I would be very surprised. ML is basically advanced applied mathematics and requires a high level of technical literacy. Africa in general lags the world in most fields of STEM. There are plenty of examples where some developing country has better cell networks than the US but fails to come close to Western cutting edge research.

klipt• 7 years ago

That's largely because the US poaches the smartest graduates from around the world by offering bigger salaries.

The list of Nobel laureates is full of hyphenated-American scientists who were born and educated elsewhere.

dwoozle• 7 years ago

Statistical machine learning is one of the fields where diversity really does matter. A CPU from Silicon Valley works just as well in Africa. But models trained in the West and with hyperparameters tweaked by western people will contain all kinds of biases that make it dangerous even in the west and downright lunatic in a very different culture.

timbaboon• 7 years ago

I can't imagine a self-driving car managing to drive on South African (or many other African) roads. It seems like these cars are trained to drive in countries with different types of driver (and pedestrian) behaviour, and probably wouldn't generalise well to places with little regard for rules of the road. Mini-bus taxis here pretty much do whatever they want and are far from rational in their decision making...

steev• 7 years ago

This is great for researchers in Africa and the surrounding area, but it seems a simpler solution would be for the CS community to move towards placing greater weight on journals, rather than conferences (like just about all other disciplines). It's not just researchers in the poorer countries of Africa that struggle. Even graduate students in the US can be put in difficult situations where a paper is accepted but they have no travel support from their advisor, department, or institution.

As an anecdote, I recently had to put up $1,500 of my own money to travel to a conference in Italy because my advisor doesn't have any funding and my department only paid for registration. Luckily my wife works and it wasn't an issue paying for the trip, but it was still a frustrating experience.

Vinnl• 7 years ago

If it was easy to get academics to disseminate their work in a different way, we'd have far fewer problems in academia...

bo1024• 7 years ago

The recent surge of ML research in various parts of Africa is awesome. But from what I've seen (including this article), it is not much of an A.I. industry yet -- most activity is in research with an academic focus. (So, no wonder it looks different from Silicon valley.) Hopefully this helps solve the chicken-and-egg problem needed to get industry going.

proc0• 7 years ago

Yeah and they will use all the deep learning research, probably open source tools like TensorFlow, and then deploy to AWS? I think what's happening is that SV is democratizing IT tools for some years now and has been expanding globally. Bit weird to frame it as a competitor when most likely it's probably a child of silicon valley, and cannot really compete unless they come up with a COMPLETELY NEW infrastructure and AI technology from the ground up, which is possible but obviously not the case.

Africa Is Building an A.I. Industry That Doesn’t Look Like Silicon Valley

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