skip to main content
research-article

Africa's social contract with AI

Published: 25 November 2019 Publication History

Abstract

The ethics of artificial intelligence in Africa should come from the social contract theories and ethical frameworks developed by African philosophers. But if AI researchers fail to incorporate cultural differences, they risk perpetuating the same injustices witnessed during colonial times.

References

[1]
Diamond, J. M. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Norton, New York, 2005.
[2]
Lloyd, S. A. and Sreedhar, S. Hobbes's moral and political philosophy. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), E. N. Zalta (Ed.); https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/hobbes-moral.
[3]
Chemhuru, M. Gleaning the social contract theory from African communitarian philosophy. South African Journal of Philosophy 36, 4 (2017), 505--515.
[4]
Friend, C. Social contract theory. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-0002; https://www.iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/#SH3a.
[5]
Caron, M. and Gupta A. A social contract for AI. International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Workshop on AI for Social Good (IJCAI '19); https://aiforgood2019.github.io/papers/IJCAI19-AI4SG_paper_36.pdf.
[6]
Floridi, L. et al. AI4People---an ethical framework for a good AI society: Opportunities, risks, principles, and recommendations. Minds & Machines 28, 4 (2018), 689--707.
[7]
Gyekye, K. Traditional political ideas: Their relevance to development in contemporary Africa. In Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies 1. Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, Washington D.C., 1992.
[8]
Hutchings, M. Want to understand the decolonizing debate? Here's your reading list. The Conversation. (December 22, 2015); https://theconversation.com/want-to-understand-the-decolonisation-debate-heres-your-reading-list-51279.
[9]
Van Sant, S. Judge blocks removal of confederate statue that sparked Charlottesville protest. NPR. (September 14, 2019); https://www.npr.org/2019/09/14/760876494/.
[10]
Utsey, S. O., Giesbrecht, N., Hook, J., and Stanard, P. M. Cultural, sociofamilial, and psychological resources that inhibit psychological distress in African Americans exposed to stressful life events and race-related stress. Journal of Counseling Psychology 55, 1 (2008).
[11]
Morrock, R. Heritage of strife: The effects of colonialist 'divide and rule' strategy upon the colonized peoples. Science & Society 37, 2 (1973), 129--151.
[12]
Moses, N. et al. Cross-cultural perspectives on eHealth privacy in Africa. In Proceedings of the Second African Conference for Human-Computer Interaction: Thriving Communities (AfriCHI '18). ACM, New York, 2011.
[13]
Machuve, D. et al. Assessing and building trust in AI for East African farmers: A poultry app for good. AI 4 Good Global Summit. (May 2018); https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/AI/2018/Pages/breakthrough-tracks.aspx#04.

Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Decolonial and Postcolonial Computing Research: A Scientometric ExplorationCompanion Publication of the 2022 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing10.1145/3500868.3559468(168-174)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2022
  • (2021)A Systematic Review of Fairness in Artificial Intelligence AlgorithmsResponsible AI and Analytics for an Ethical and Inclusive Digitized Society10.1007/978-3-030-85447-8_24(271-284)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2021
  • (2020)Decolonizing Learning Spaces for Sociotechnical Research and DesignCompanion Publication of the 2020 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing10.1145/3406865.3418592(519-526)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2020

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students
XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students  Volume 26, Issue 2
Global Cultures and Computing
Winter 2019
70 pages
ISSN:1528-4972
EISSN:1528-4980
DOI:10.1145/3373363
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 25 November 2019
Published in XRDS Volume 26, Issue 2

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Qualifiers

  • Research-article
  • Popular
  • Refereed

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)45
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
Reflects downloads up to 16 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Decolonial and Postcolonial Computing Research: A Scientometric ExplorationCompanion Publication of the 2022 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing10.1145/3500868.3559468(168-174)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2022
  • (2021)A Systematic Review of Fairness in Artificial Intelligence AlgorithmsResponsible AI and Analytics for an Ethical and Inclusive Digitized Society10.1007/978-3-030-85447-8_24(271-284)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2021
  • (2020)Decolonizing Learning Spaces for Sociotechnical Research and DesignCompanion Publication of the 2020 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing10.1145/3406865.3418592(519-526)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2020

View Options

Login options

Full Access

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Digital Edition

View this article in digital edition.

Digital Edition

Magazine Site

View this article on the magazine site (external)

Magazine Site

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media