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Department of Computer Science and Technology

Read more at: Oops! We Automated Bullshit.

Oops! We Automated Bullshit.

9 November 2023

ChatGPT is a bullshit generator. To understand AI, we should think harder about bullshit


Read more at: Nic Bidwell's Thoughts on Epistemic Accountability for AI

Nic Bidwell's Thoughts on Epistemic Accountability for AI

29 December 2021

Ongoing work with Nic Bidwell, our collaborator and host for the work we were doing in Namibia before interrupted by the pandemic, has led to her writing this reflective piece that I am sharing with blog readers.


Read more at: Black Lives Matter in AI

Black Lives Matter in AI

7 June 2020

How do the Black Lives Matter protests relate to the AI in Africa project, and the work of Cambridge Global Challenges?


Read more at: COVID-19 - project suspension

COVID-19 - project suspension

7 April 2020

As with so many enterprises around the world, the AI in Africa project has been suspended in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.


Read more at: Indigenous AI in the Pacific

Indigenous AI in the Pacific

2 March 2020

Before starting the next leg of my fieldwork in Namibia, I made a side-trip to my home country of Aotearoa New Zealand, where Billie Lythberg, Rachel Wolfgramm and their colleagues have helped me to explore interpretations of AI in Maori and Pasifika cultures.


Read more at: AI for Maternal Health in Ethiopia

AI for Maternal Health in Ethiopia

2 December 2019

Mahlet Woreta is an Ethiopian researcher has been building natural language processing systems to improve maternal health and safety in childbirth.


Read more at: BBC Digital Planet Coverage

BBC Digital Planet Coverage

30 November 2019

The AI in Africa project has been covered in an interview on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.


Read more at: AI and Health Records

AI and Health Records

18 November 2019

What opportunities are there for AI methods to contribute to healthcare in Ethiopia?

I've been learning about the IT systems deployed in the Bahir Dar health centre and main hospital. There are some serious systems challenges - with some relationship to my previous work in electronic health records, but no apparent 'quick wins' for AI research.


Read more at: Programming Neural Nets in Amharic

Programming Neural Nets in Amharic

7 November 2019

Is it possible to teach and practice programming wholly in a national language, rather than the mix of English keywords and local content that is so typical of digital working?

Addisu Damena at the Bahir Dar Institute of Technology has created a system that does exactly this - not only for practical tasks like interactive websites, but even for experimenting with AI using neural networks.


Read more at: An Amharic Arduino? Culture in hardware

An Amharic Arduino? Culture in hardware

1 November 2019

We have been reminded how deep the cultural assumptions of open source and community computing can go.

Eden Melaku, a fifth-year undergraduate in software engineering at Bahir Dar University, discovered during a hackathon-style workshop that the open source Arduino platform is not open enough to support the Amharic language.