By Chiamaka Okafor

I had been off X trying to catch my breath only occasionally popping in to repost or make comments on posts, especially those within my areas of interest. It was on one of such days, days of popping in to repost, that I, just like many of us learnt in perhaps one of the brashest ways that “Delve” is an Artificial Intelligence signature word.

What a way to remember the AI session from the 15ᵗʰ Anniversary of the African Studies Center at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I had the privilege of listening to experts from different fields, including Artificial Intelligence. I was in Ann Arbor when the social networking platform, X, was almost set ablaze by people from the global majority, including Nigerians, who felt utterly insulted by the weighty assertion about “Delve”.

Joan Nwatu whose session hit home now more than it did when she made her presentation, talked about the western colonisation of AI or the absence of diversity, equity, and inclusion in AI technologies and trends.

She started her session with a picture of a clay pot, which is a throwback to what was some sort of a refrigerator in the ages before we became exposed to science and technology. It may not have been used around the world, but people in Africa used big clay pots to keep water cool.

There were other pictures used to illustrate a refrigerator.

The point of Joan’s presentation was to show how today’s Al and its developers continue to view the world from a limited prism, theirs only. Her presentation showed that when you search for the word “refrigerator”, only today’s model will appear in the search, therefore, shutting down the lived experiences of people in parts of the world for whom today’s model of a refrigerator is something new. Before today’s metal/aluminum cases, people enjoyed cold water.

Back to the Al signature word “Delve”. It was a beautiful Sunday (April 7, 2024) for some or most people when Paul Graham, an American computer scientist, with almost two million followers on X, decided to shake things up by announcing that Delve = Artificial Intelligence.

“Someone sent me a cold email proposing a novel project. Then, I noticed it used the word “delve”. My point here is not that I dislike ‘delve,’ though I do but that it’s a sign that text was written by ChatGPT,” Mr Graham wrote on X.

Whoever the proponent of the novel project is/was, lost an opportunity to see their ideas come alive because they chose to “delve”. This is only one of the many ways that emerging Artificial Intelligence trends further widen the inequality gap between the global majority and minority.

Quick question here; how can we, Nigerians/Africans delve into the beautiful and promising word of Artificial Intelligence and not get kicked out for using the word delve before we delve in?

We hoped that the rise/growth of technology would strengthen and bring the door to the global village that Marshall McLuhan talked about years ago closer, but here we are being further divided or better still denied opportunities to exist because of linguistic or semantic differences. Whatever happened to diversity, equity, and inclusion?

For most of us, Nigerians, the word delve, which simply means to examine something in detail, is commonly used in different parts of the world, including Nigeria. You can hear or read expressions like, “He delved into ….. Or I will delve into…”

Paul Graham’s post saw lots of tears on timelines as Gen Zs will say, especially from Nigerians who felt attacked by his post.

“I was using the word delve in stories I was writing way back in primary school! For someone who read widely and wrote from a young age, attributing the word ‘delve’ to AI is simply preposterous,” one of the many gutted X users wrote.

Another advised, “You should take educational background into consideration at times, adding that “folks from certain parts of the world use certain words like “delve” in their sentences. I can tell you for free that Nigerians do. I do. A lot of immigrants who studied under the British system do.”

The summary is that today’s AI is not as inclusive as it should be. Secondly, we are losing sight of an opportunity to rewrite the AI narratives that exclude people in the global majority.

I think this an opportunity for us, Nigerians, to put on our research caps and delve into the Al world to avoid a repetition of the Paul Graham scenario.

While I would love to be the one to help us all understand how we can close this gap, I am only but a student and explorer of Al and all it is doing to our lives and changing the world as we knew it or know it. All I can do is point to this opportunity and have other compatriots who have expertise delve in.

Chiamaka Okafor is the Executive Director of the Media and Information Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue Foundation MILD Foundation (MILID Foundation).