Author: The Conversation

If it’s steered correctly, artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to accelerate development. It can drive breakthroughs in agriculture. It can expand access to healthcare and education. It can boost financial inclusion and strengthen democratic participation. But without deliberate action, the AI “revolution” risks deepening inequality more than it will expand opportunity. As a scholar of the history and future of AI, I’ve written about the dangers of AI widening global inequality. There’s an urgent need to develop governance mechanisms that will try to redistribute the benefits of this technology. The scale of the AI gap is stark. Africa holds less than 1%…

Talking monkeys vlogging from sacred sites, three-legged sharks wearing Nike sneakers, babies trapped in space… if you spend any time on social media these days you’re likely to come across such examples of what’s been dubbed “AI slop”. These short videos are simultaneously flashy, generic and bizarre, characterised by uncanny visuals, robotic voiceovers and nonsensical narratives. The rapid emergence of the generative AI video tools capable of conjuring such cinematic images from simple text prompts has been met with a mixture of awe, derision and concern. Their outputs, often dazzling at first glance but riddled with odd features, occupy a…

Robots come in a vast array of shapes and sizes. By definition, they’re machines that perform automatic tasks and can be operated by humans, but sometimes work autonomously – without human help. Most of these machines are built for a specific purpose: think of the puck-shaped robot vacuum or a robotic assembly arm in a factory. But recently, human-shaped or humanoid robots have increasingly entered the spotlight. Humanoid robots are exactly what they sound like – machines with arms, legs, a torso and a head, typically walking upright on two legs. Investment in humanoid robot development has been skyrocketing recently. If…

Deepfakes are forgeries of people’s faces, voices and likeness generated through artificial intelligence (AI). They create a serious digital deception. Deepfakes undermine constitutional rights, reduce trust in media and distort fairness in elections. While many countries have laws that address the risks caused by deepfakes, enforcement remains a challenge. Deepfakes began to be widely created in 2017 after they’d first appeared on Reddit, a discussion website of forums where people exchange information. A Reddit user called Deepfakes shared an AI software tool that could superimpose celebrities’ faces on pornographic videos. AI-generated media became widely accessible through software apps that enable people…

Just for a moment this month, Larry Ellison, co-founder of US cloud computing company Oracle, became the world’s richest person. The octogenarian tech titan briefly overtook Elon Musk after Oracle’s share price rocketed 43% in a day, adding about US$100 billion to his wealth. The reason? Oracle inked a deal to provide artificial intelligence (AI) giant OpenAI with US$300 billion in computing power over five years. While Ellison’s moment in the spotlight was fleeting, it also illuminated something far more significant: AI has created extraordinary levels of concentration in global financial markets. This raises an uncomfortable question not only for seasoned investors…

Scams are nothing new – fraud has existed as long as human greed. What changes are the tools. Scammers thrive on exploiting vulnerable, uninformed users, and they adapt to whatever technologies or trends dominate the moment. In 2025, that means AI, cryptocurrencies and stolen personal data are their weapons of choice. And, as always, the duty, fear and hope of their targets provide openings. Today, duty often means following instructions from bosses or co-workers, who scammers can impersonate. Fear is that a loved one, who scammers can also impersonate, is in danger. And hope is often for an investment scheme…

This week Disney, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros Discovery jointly sued MiniMax, a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company, over alleged copyright infringement. The three Hollywood media giants allege MiniMax (which operates Hailuo AI and is reportedly valued at US$4 billion) engaged in mass copyright infringement of characters such as Darth Vader and Mickey Mouse by scraping vast amounts of copyrighted data to train their models without permission or payment. This lawsuit is the latest in a growing list of copyright infringement cases involving AI. These cases include authors, publishers, newspapers, music labels and independent musicians around the world. Disney, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros Discovery have the resources to litigate hard and possibly shape…

Artificial intelligence or AI uses computers to perform tasks that would normally have needed human intelligence. Today AI is being put to use in many aspects of everyday life, like virtual banking assistants, health chatbots, self-driving cars, even the recommendations you see on social media. A new survey of over 3,000 South Africans from all walks of life asked how people feel about AI. It reveals that most South Africans can’t relate to AI in meaningful ways – despite the global hype about its pros and cons. We asked two of its authors to tell us more. What did you find? The research…

When the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Observatory goes online later this decade, it will create one of science’s biggest data challenges. The SKA Observatory is a global radio telescope project built in the Southern Hemisphere. There, views of our Milky Way are clearest and the SKA’s remote sites limit human-made radio interference. The project spans two sites: approximately 131,000 Christmas-tree-shaped antennas in western Australia and 200 large dish antennas in the Karoo region of South Africa. As part of this international collaboration, Canada has established a data-processing centre at the University of Victoria. The SKA Observatory will produce around 600 petabytes of data each…

Generative AI promises to help solve everything from climate change to poverty. But behind every chatbot response lies a deep environmental cost. Current AI technology requires the use of large datacentres stationed around the world, which altogether draw enormous amounts of power and consume millions of litres of water to stay cool. By 2030, datacentres are expect to consume as much electricity as all of Japan, according to the International Energy Agency, and AI could be responsible for 3.5% of global electricity use, according to one consultancy report. The continuous massive expansion of AI use and its rapidly growing energy demand would…