Google has opened its first artificial intelligence laboratory in Ghana
When people think of artificial intelligence, they mostly think of scenes from science fiction movies, but in reality, it applies to everyday life from virtual assistants to language translation on Google, says John Quinn, an AI researcher.
Google will now position itself as an "AI First" company and with research centers around the world in places like Tokyo, Zurich, New York and Paris.
And last week, the technology company opened its first center in Africa in Ghana's capital Accra.
Benefits of AI
AI can be used in sectors such as agriculture, health and education, and research scientist Moustapha Cisse leads up Google's AI efforts in Africa, says the team's goal is to provide developers with the necessary survey needed to build products that can solve problems that Africa is facing today.
"Most of what we do in our research sites on Google and not just in Accra, we publish it and open source, so anyone can use it to build all sorts of things," he said.
Cisse mentioned the app that was used by the Tanzanian farmer, to diagnose her cassava disease as an example of the type of product his team plans to cooperate with relevant institutes across different sectors.
"A team of Pennsylvania University and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture using TensorFlow to build ne w artificial intelligence models distributed on phones to diagnose reading disease.
" This was not done by us but by people who use the tools we built.
? When we do science, the results of our research, usually and hopefully, because it is of good quality, goes far beyond what we expect, and we hope to see the same things happening here in Accra and across Africa, Cisse says.
Cisse, an expert from Senegal, says center directly engaged with researchers in African universities by granting scholarships to those interested in the various fields of AI and providing Ph.D. scholarship.
Cisse leads a team of nine others who include researchers and software engineers. Team members come from nine different countries including Lesotho, Uganda and Ireland.
It's a diverse team, and Cisse says it's important that Africans are at the forefront of offering solutions to problems on their continent. [19659012] Google sorry "small error" that sent the Ghanaian currency submerged "data-src-mini =" // cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/190321125505-ghana-cedi-small-169.jpg "data- src-xsmall = "// cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/190321125505-ghana-cedi-medium-plus-169.jpg" data-src-small = "http://cdn.cnn.com/ cnnnext / dam / assets / 190321125505-ghana-cedi-large-169.jpg "data-src-medium =" // cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/190321125505-ghana-cedi-exlarge-169.jpg "data-src-large =" // cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/190321125505-ghana-cedi-super-169.jpg "data-src-full16x9 =" // cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext /dam/assets/190321125505-ghana-cedi-full-169.jpg "data-src-mini1x1 =" // cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/190321125505-ghana-cedi-small-11.jpg " data-demand-load = "not-loaded" data-eq-pts = "mini: 0, xsmall: 221, small: 308, medium: 461, large: 781" src = "data: image / gif; base64, R0lGODlhEAAJAJEAAAAAAP /////// wAAACH5BAEAAAIALAAAAAAQAAkAAAIKlI + py + 0Po5yUFQA7 "/> 
[19659016] The Center will also focus on improving Google Translate's ability to capture African languages more accurately, with Cisse saying a continent with more than 2,000 dialects deserves to be better served.
Algorithmic bias
Because AI works fundamentally based on the data input in it, it sometimes shows a real bias that is not inclusive and representative of all end users, says Nyalleng Moorosi, a software engineer at the center whose work focuses
Moorosi who comes from Lesotho and holds a bachelor's degree from a liberal arts college says her background means she sees the problem as a human problem that needs to be solved by diversifying samples used to collect data.
She said several Africans would join the data collection to provide an accurate representation of users.
"When you build something, you think it will only work for the workplace I know you and your neighborhood. And you forget that maybe it can be so great that it is distributed to foreign neighborhoods," says Moorosi.
"The The best way to go about is to have different teams working on these algorithms, and then we get to a place. "[19659002]
Privacy concerns
AI works because many personal information is input into it, and so comes privacy concerns over what's happening with the data people hand over to a big company like Google
With the center now operational after a few months after the plan, Google's efforts at AI, which has a transformational effect in Africa, will now be tested.
Continent is waiting.
