What the Rise of Artificial Intelligence in the Global South Tells Us About Our Future
Halfway through an epidemiology conference session, the last of the day and an hour before dinner, something a presenter said jolted me out of my hungry stupor: “A lot of AI innovation is going to come out of the Global South.” I had only half paid attention to this woman’s presentation on software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) via cell phone camera to scan and digitize handwriting from paper health forms in Malawi, when I was suddenly transported back to an undergraduate anthropology class and a book titled Theory from the South (2012). This book, written by anthropologists Jean and (now-disgraced) John Comaroff, in part posits that the Global North (Europe and America) is actually evolving to be more like the Global South (Latin America, Africa, parts of Asia). The authors go on to argue that the Global South has been treated like a “laboratory” of capitalism – where new configurations of industry, labor, and regulatory environments are tested and honed be...