Seminar "Decolonizing AI Ethics: Rethinking Governance From Below" with Yousif Hassan
Date: 10.07.2025 14:30
Lecture / presentation
Format: hybrid
Location: Milano, Italy
Event Fee: Free
Organizer(s):
PHILTECH Research Center for the Philosophy of Technology University of Milan
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is capturing the African imaginations as a gateway to progress and prosperity. Several actors in the continent including governments, scientists, entrepreneurs, and international development organizations are turning to AI to address long-standing socioeconomic challenges in the continent. On the other hand, African researchers highlight the gap in regulatory frameworks and policies that govern the development of AI in Africa. They argue that AI technology could exacerbate problems of inequalities and injustice in the continent. However, most of the literature on AI ethics is biased toward Euro-American perspectives and based on Western frameworks and epistemologies. They lack the understanding of how AI development is apprehended in the Global South, and particularly Africa. Drawing on case studies in the area of AI for development in the continent, this talk argues for looking beyond the question of ethics in AI and examining AI governance issues through the analytical lens of coloniality and the political economy of technoscience to understand AI development in Africa. By doing so, this talk presents a different theorization for AI ethics from the South that is based on lived experiences of those in the margins and avoids the framing of technological futures that simplistically pathologize or celebrate Africa.
Post created by: Lymor Wolf Goldstein