Kwame Som-Pimpong

  • No. 224 – On Confidence

    In the West and East, when you talk about how things got the way they are, you’re able to go back pretty far to start to weave that story. When it comes to Africa, those stories tend to be shorter, starting around the time Europeans got to the shores of Southern and West Africa. We…

  • Can Anything Good From Anywhere Other than White America?

    George Washington – Unifying figure if gigantic trust James Madison – genius of constitutional architecture Alexander Hamilton – understand the requirements of political economy John Marshall – construe the Constitution of such a republic Also Needed the social soil of the US in the fourth quarter of the 18th century in the mid Atlantic. Not…

  • No. 223: New Column!

    I’ve got a weekly column I’m writing for Moguldom now where I will be writing about all things artificial intelligence and black people. I’m real grateful for the opportunity. Here are links to the first couple pieces: Reimagining Drug Discovery And Testing To Increase Genetic Data For Black People What Does Neuralink Mean for Intellectual…

  • No. 223 – The Week’s AI Investments

    Microsoft’s $1B in OpenAI Microsoft and OpenAI signed a deal where Microsoft will invest $1 billion in OpenAI’s business. OpenAI will use the funds to buy computing power from Microsoft. Running the algorithms needed to develop new AI technologies requires rapidly growing amounts of energy. This is the largest deal in the current inflection point…

  • No. 222: Minerals, Electric Vehicles, and AI

    Andreessen Horowitz posted this interesting conversation on cobalt – the mineral helping power our phones, electric vehicles, and more. The conversation got me thinking about a piece I wrote back in 2015 (time flies!) on Jean-Yves Ollivier, Marc Andreessen, and the common interests they share in minerals that power the global economy. There has been…

  • 222: Neuralink…

    The news rippling across the tech world last week was Elon Musk putting on his trademark events where he talks with certainty about a lot of things that aren’t certain. A few years ago, Musk invested $XX in the company, an effort to build a mesh brain computer interface that could be woven into the…

  • No. 221: Preparing Our Kids for an AI World

    My daughter is particular about manners. If you don’t say please or thank you when you’re supposed, it’s a serious problem. This is starting to extend to the Alexa device she uses to listen to audiobooks. She says please and thank you after the device follows her instructions. Numerous times she has corrected me for…

  • No. 221

    Jennifer Doudna on gene editing – FT Scientists have made incredible breakthroughs since the early days of

  • No. 220: Convergence in Advancing AI Technology

    Over 50 years ago, Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel observed that the number of transistors computer chip makers were able to fit on a chip doubled every two years. Moore’s Law held true until the past couple years as the amount of power these chips need to compute becomes unsustainable and their…

  • No. 219: Podcast Interview – AI + Africa

    Thanks to Kwabena Sarkodie for having me on his podcast, Insights from the Sahara, to discuss all things artificial intelligence and Africa.

  • No. 219

    Coffee Board takes tech route to help growers boost yield (The Hindu) Twitter acquires Fabula AI to strengthen its machine learning expertise (Twitter) This strategic investment in graph deep learning research, technology and talent will be a key driver as we work to help people feel safe on Twitter and help them see relevant information.

  • No. 218: AWS AI Extraction | Social Welfare Programs and AI | Indian State Adoption of AI

    AWS Announces General Availability of Amazon Textract (Amazon) Amazon is making widely available a text and data extraction tool that is going to make it real easy to search all kinds of information. My whole time reading this release all I could think about was how hard it is to search your own posts on…

  • No. 90: Cut the Deep Fakes |

    Outsmarting deep fakes: AI-driven imaging system protects authenticity (TechXplore)

  • No. 217: Algorithmic Self-Hate

    There’s been a lot of conversation around the importance of making sure there’s diversity among developers and researchers who are building artificial intelligence. One of the primary concerns is that this diversity imbalance will lead to bias being built into algorithms. The proposed remedy is for teams to hire more minorities on their teams. I’m…

  • No. 216: Migration in Africa | International AI Principles | Cut Through the Hype

    Op-Ed: The Future of Africa’s diaspora is in Africa (CNBC) 42 Countries Agree to International Principles for Artificial Intelligence (NextGov) Five questions you can use to cut through AI hype (MIT Technology Review)