How Africa Should Engage Ubuntu Ethics and Artificial Intelligence

Automation of human tasks has taken place for a long time now. Humans have in earlier periods dreamed of a world where machines capable of mimicking decision making would be created with some works of fiction describing in caricature, how machines would take over the human space in the world. Artificial intelligence has come to fruition in the last few decades following the development of fast computing capability and vast chip memory. Discussions of how the human space will look and feel when artificial intelligence have taken place at various levels of global organization geared towards ensuring that the new “thinking machines” do not rock human society in ways to render them obsolete.

This article looks at the ethics of AI considering the issues that have been outlined by others in the light of communitarian ethics as seen in Africa. It describes the possible impact of thinking machines on society and how individuals would relate with each other and with AI systems.


Introduction
Artificial Intelligence (AI) as we know it, has been around for seven decades. Immediately, following the assembling of electric computers, and probably, owing to old predictions, developers started thinking of new machines that could work more independently of human intervention. Artificial Intelligence became a study discipline attracting many students in universities, pursuing different disciplines from computer science to management, psychology and engineering. This brought about two categories of classifying the studies; theoretical and pragmatic [11]. Theoretical AI study refers to the use of AI concepts and models to answer questions about human beings like what is meant by intelligence, how AI is different from natural intelligence and others. Theoretical generally means scientific, while pragmatic refers to the technological and focuses on engineering works dealing with machine learning, deep learning and automated reasoning [8]. Pragmatic studies of AI combine Information and Communication Technology (ICT) with vast quantities of data now known as big data. Machines are currently able to operate independently, in various areas like medicine, transport and science using this combination of deep learning and reasoning.
AI accomplishes the decision making without any awareness the way humans would. Thus, it computes rather than think to arrive at a decision.
Robots doing different human chores utilize strong or weak AI. Strong AI exhibits general human-like intelligence. Whereas, weak AI mimics human intelligence in dealing with one specific task for which they are developed. Highly specific human characteristics like free will and ethical decision-making is yet to be achieved in AI. Allan Turing predicted in a 1950 proposal that machines would learn until they are indistinguishable from human beings, possibly achieving consciousness. This prediction has not become a reality (depending on what we mean by consciousness) but work continues such that we might see it happen [1].
There are several publications on AI around the world but not much on AI and Africa, a developing region with a distinct community and its own experiences and ethic. There are publications on AI and human rights and on AI and libertarian ethics but not any in communitarian ethics (Ubuntu) and AI. This paper singles out ethics of AI with a communitarian approach.
It has been noted in a recent publication that Africa has not contributed to the development of regulations that will inform future growth of AI [3].

Artificial Intelligence Development
The first computer was switched on in 1946. It Rochester and Claude E. Shannon coined the term 'artificial intelligence' [7]. Its meaning however, has changed slightly over time and today it is the ability of a computer program or a machine to 'think and learn' more or less like humans. AI is also a field of study, which tries to make computers "smart"; that is working on their own without being encoded with extra commands. Over the years, public understanding of AI has been between the science fiction narrative and the  1. Privacy -your data should not be used without informed consent and the right to rectify, amend or modify information held by a data controller.
2. Accountability -On face value, the term "artificial intelligence" suggests equivalence with human intelligence. Depending on whom you ask, the age of autonomous AI is either upon us or is coming soon. Concerns about who will be accountable for decision made by AI and not humans are now taking shape. There is need for creation of a monitoring group to be ethically aligned in its pursuit to ensure that AI systems do not infringe upon human rights and the right of appeal.
3. Safety and Security -the principle of safety requires that an AI system be reliable and that, the system does what it is supposed to do without harming living beings or environment. Security concerns for an AI system's ability to resist external threats such as cyber attacks and to protect privacy and integrity and confidentiality of personal data.  It is possible that the information the public gets will be manipulated to produce specific social outcomes.
This may not be only during election time as has been witnessed in two countries during recent elections; in the US [10], and in Kenya during the 2017 elections but at other times of significant public decisions [4]. Besides this, plenty of misleading information is made to look real by many other persons operating privately. Too much skewed information needed or not needed, is cunningly availed to help shape opinion and action for a gullible public and in ways that may not be in their best interest.
Looking at ethics of AI within an Ubuntu framework provides an opportunity to reexamine the biases that existed prior to AI with renewed vigor. AI can however, contain biases innocently acquired during programming and "learning" that may exhibit some possibly unintended discriminatory effects. Teaching ethics to robots and AI is complicated and has no clear answers much like teaching ethics to children [9]. Ubuntu here demands extreme caution in this regard.
Human control and professional responsibility are two sides of the same coin; leaving AI to its own design is abdicating a responsibility spanning many millennia. Ubuntu would reject this abdication on the account that it does harm to the community.

Conclusion
The arrival of AI in Africa has brought with it new issues that challenge the current ways of relating, policymaking and practice. We are raising an alarm that it will mean changes, some of which nobody is thinking about at the moment. But none of which can be wished away nor ignored. Africa will need to play her role in the global context and must prepare to engage in way that may be discomforting, though urgent and important. AI will come in its true form for good or for worse, depending on the level of preparedness that it finds countries in the region. It is a useful tool here, just like it is elsewhere and will find application in the nascent economies. The greatest contribution to make is to humanize the technology and be ready to mitigate any apparent negative effects. African countries will first learn about the impact and be part of the development of AI going forward as a most effective way of ensuring the balance in the ethics that the machines will learn and the data it will learn from are all inclusive of human kind's geographical variations.
Now that AI learns, we ought to teach it the correct way to 'think' through ethical issues so as to retain harmony such societies we have described above.
It is the responsibility of those working in these areas in Africa to carry on these important training by being part of the development, data collection and testing.