 Welcome to the AI for Good Global Summit. Our guest is John Kamara. John is a serial entrepreneur and founder of AI Center of Excellence Africa. John, thank you for your time. Thank you for having me. What would you like to see come out of this summit? First, I'm really excited to be back here after a few years away due to the pandemic, but objectively I would like to see initiatives that will actually help drive growth in emerging markets, especially Africa, and from practical things that we can do and report back by the end of next year with the international AI community back in projects that are very fundamental for the development of all emerging markets, especially Africa. Can you give me some examples? So one of the things, when I was here a number of years ago, we had talked about what would it take for Africa, or most countries in Africa, to also be part of this AI revolution, and the fundamental thing that we talked about was education, capacity development, talent, so and you realize that obviously fast forward now, age of chat, GPT and whatnot. Without the fundamental education and skill set, we again are back to consumption economy. We're not consuming what everybody else is producing, and which means as a society, as nations, as people, it is extremely difficult if you're not part of the ownership of an IP, and AI, various models of it, are IPs. If you don't own any of that IP and you keep consuming, you just keep paying, so you can't really develop your own society or actually find solutions for your society based on the context of where you're from or where you're at. Now without the skill set to do that, it doesn't matter what it is that we talk about or how many times we talk about all the other things that are important, but without the basic fundamental skill sets in the continent for our young people to be able to actually build AI solutions, have the skills to build models that make sense to solve our own problems, then we are back to the same old adage all over again. So for me that's that's the same consistent theme that I've been talking about for four years. We need to build more capacity in Africa, and we need to start from early age, we need to start from universities, we need to start from high schools, and also we need to also retrain a lot of people to give us the skills that we require to actually access the value of the market. So that for me is the practical example of one thing that I want out of this place. A commitment from a lot of the partners that we're talking to that how are you going to help us develop the skillsets we require for us to play at the same table with you. And who's been doing it right then? I mean you've got countries like India. I mean again one of the things that I was just in the US last week discussing the same issue and I said you know we have to look at all the emerging markets that are very similar to us what they're doing. India has decided to figure out ways to actually drive its own economy via you know talent fundamental skillsets and also building you know qualitative human capital as against just the quantity of the human capital you have. So the society is quite similar and the responsibility of those societies are very similar so they are and they're also now dragging everybody into what they want you to do for them rather than just you know what you want for them. So and I think that's also the thing that we should look at in Africa if you also look at some other Asian countries as well. So our practical example is not Europe. Our practical example is all the emerging markets the way they're doing it Europe for us would be a support to America would be support to help us achieve this goal but I don't think that you know most of the African countries are so different that you also have to look at each one of the issues that exist in those countries. I mean some countries you can't even find 50 engineers in the countries. How can AI be used to address specific global issues? I mean I think again I'm going to bring it home to Africa because that's my very core interest. One of the key things that we see especially with climate change and when I think climate change I'm not talking about the change but I'm talking about also agriculture I'm talking about healthcare and I'm talking about biodiversity changes and I'm talking so these are fundamental things that are you know important for everyday life even the blue ocean economy that we're talking about and environmental impacts of changes. So we're seeing a lot of use of data and then AI models that have been built for example early warning systems to actually help us you know predict potential flood crisis to predict potential hurricanes and cyclones that are happening but also drought we have in so much drought right now so that's we we're seeing a lot of opportunities and we're looking for more projects like that in those spaces. Then you talk about things like agriculture again drought is costing us to have to find you know use a lot of models in AI and a lot of data to try to make seeds that are drought resistant because again that is an impactful thing a farmer can now plant better seeds even with the drought situation you know food security and food productivity obviously means and then healthcare again using you know very interesting data sets to start predicting doing preventive healthcare for women especially in rural and sub rural communities as well so those are the three areas for me that really excite me about you know the value of what AI can do in emerging markets again. So you give all these examples which is the most exciting one would you say at the moment? Healthcare, healthcare really really excites me a lot because of your saving human lives using you know data and then building AI models on top of it and and I'm seeing so many different use cases that are actually solving problems out of taking us months and years to solve and that compressing those problems and also bringing a lot of learning opportunities to people in real time so healthcare and agriculture those would be the two places where I really see a lot of excitement. How can we ensure that this technology is being developed in a safe and ethical way? Good question. I think everyone is concerned about AI ethics the ethical nature of AI and across the globe I think it's absolutely paramount and absolutely important that we really look at ethical AI and what people are doing and holding people accountable and you know creating frameworks that hold people accountable but also in the question of ethics I see like another question you know which is around policy that in emerging markets if we don't play at the table because we can't even develop solutions and we don't have the skill set and a lot of policies that put in place does that not hinder our own development as well? So it's a very interesting important issue but I also think that developing those markets or inclusive AI which is for me the most important thing should also be at the forefront as much as we're talking about ethical AI and it shouldn't just be about only social good there's also commercial good because people who are talking about AI ethics are driving commercial good out of AI so now we're talking about social good which is important in social public protection but they're driving commercial good out of it and you want to stop other societies from also driving commercial good so there's gotta be a balance in these conversations in ways that says what are we doing to also support these economies as well rather than just saying now you have to stop doing this because we feel it's not ethical. John Kamara thank you so much for your time more coming up later on the AI for good global summit.