By Amran Gaye
Episode 1
“And to Sulayman We subjected the wind… And among the jinn were those who worked for him by the permission of his Lord. And they made for him what he willed …”
Surah An-Naml (27:16-19)
The Rajo came first.
As a child, I woke every morning to the sounds of my father listening to BBC Arabic, catching up with what had happened in the world while he slept.
And my grandma Yass: every Saturday night, we would tune in to “tiyaatarr” on Rajo Gambia, morality plays set in urban Gambia: housewives and men of the house; comeuppances and lessons learnt.
For both of them the Rajo was a waitali, a source of endless information; a mechanical harit.
Television followed. It let us see the World instead of just hearing it. Football matches over satellite TV; video clubs and VCDs; GRTS: music and sports and propaganda.
But though it was much better than the Rajo, television was still also only one-way. The TV stations broadcast into our living rooms and we watched whatever they had on.
Then came the Internet. It gave us the ability to not just listen and see, but also be seen and heard. To stay in touch, wherever we are located, a network of Gambians in the diaspora connected with Gambians at home, families and friends joined across oceans and continents.
Each of these technologies was a progression, giving our People access to a wider and wider world of information: text, audio, video. And also connections. Distant friendships and relationships bloomed. Whatsapp, video calls, text messages, voice notes: real relationships grown in artificial soil.
AI – Artificial Intelligence – is the latest in this progression. But what is it exactly? Let’s start with an analogy.
Think of the Internet as Maarseh Serekunda.
Facebook has a stall selling connections to your friends. Instagram has a stall where you can share and see your friends’ photos. Google has a stall that helps you find anything in the Maarseh, directing you to the correct stall selling it. The Whatsapp stall lets you send text messages, or leave a voice note for someone. Etc etc.
To get anything in this maarseh, you have to visit the specific stall you want services from (Facebook, Google, etc).
So far so good.
But, rather than going stall to stall asking for information and prices, what if we could speak with the maarseh directly and just tell it what we want?
So you could ask the maarseh questions like:
– Do you have a stall selling foga jaaye?
– which of your stalls have salad and what’s their prices?
– I’m looking for tobaski clothes – can you find me tayorr who are available and can finish in time?
Pause for a moment and think about that. A thinking maarseh, one that knows and understand itself.
Now imagine the market can also do things for you. For example, you could tell it you want to cook a cup of sushi. It would break it down to the ingredients you need – kong, diwtirr, kaanja, etc. – and order them from the market, book a taxi to deliver it, and give you a recipe.
The market doesn’t just provide you with information anymore; it is also your companion and assistant, acting on your behalf in the real world.
And, because you can access the market from anywhere, you no longer need to visit it. And, because sellers don’t need to be present in the market itself, they can sell from anywhere: the Maarseh can send taxis anywhere, after all.
And so this new kind of maarseh doesn’t need a fixed location; it spans the entirety of Gambia, wherever there are people offering goods, and taxis willing to deliver them. A nationwide intelligent Maarseh at the heart of our economy, letting anyone sell anything, automatically collecting taxes for government and keeping track of credit ratings.
In this case the Maarseh would be called an AI – Artificial Intelligence. It is not human, but it can act on its own. Human intelligence is broad: the same brain can learn to make panket and also build skyscrapers. The “Intelligence” in AI is narrow: each AI only an expert in its own field. The Maarseh AI cannot play football or fall in love or be sad. It has no feelings. It’s just very very good at the one thing it does: connecting sellers to buyers, which is in the end all a Maarseh is.
But the Maarseh is just a start. Imagine other systems also made into AI.
A student AI agent, leading to a near 100% pass rate (from the current abysmal less than 5%). A government AI agent, coup-proof and allowing us to have a new kind of direct democracy that lets every single Gambian participate in every single decision made by our Government. AI agents for our farmers that can speak to them in our native languages – Wolof, Mandinka, Jola, etc – and let them catch up with the latest farming techniques and knowledge from around the world. AI healthcare agent that accompanies Gambians from when they are born to when they die, customised to each one and their health needs.
These are just a few examples. We are truly limited only by our imagination as a nation.
We’ve covered a lot today. I hope you found it illuminating. Over the next 5 weeks, we will be looking more in-depth at each of the examples I gave above, imagining how each could change Gambia into the prosperous home we all desire, so comfortable we don’t have to flee to “out” to make it.
And finally we will also cover the perils of AI and how we can defend against them even while enjoying the benefits.
And remember: the things we will cover in the series are achievable today, even given our limited resources. None of it is science fiction or some pipe dream. Keep that in mind as you read, and I hope it inspires you to action.
See you next week for episode 2: “How We Learn”.
The author is a Gambian computer scientist, writer and AI practitioner. He can be reached at [email protected]).
