Google's African scientists teach machines to solve problems on the continent

• A new Google center in Accra, Ghana, will enable researchers based in Africa to shape artificial intelligence (AI) to solve African problems.
• A new team of scientists will develop ways to help AI operate on basic cell phones, which explains how the internet is used by most African countries.
• They also want to teach AI to translate 2000 African languages; to tell you if your plant is sick from a photo; and teach him to count buildings using satellite images.

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Google has launched a new center in Accra, Ghana, which will enable researchers based in Africa to shape artificial intelligence (AI) to solve African problems.

"Artificial intelligence is an essential tool used today to accelerate all kinds of sciences in physics, chemistry and engineering. But most people who work to advance science and develop it in the field are mostly based in Western countries. It is important that such an important area [can address] the diversity of the problems the world is facing today, and Africa is well represented, "said Moustapha Cissé, head of Google AI.

In just seven years, Google's artificial intelligence technology has progressed at breakneck speed. Let's take the example of the identification of objects in images: in 2012, artificial intelligence programs had made mistakes with 26% of objects. Nowadays, the AI ​​error rate is on average 3%, which is better than the man (5%).

"We have been able to train the machines to identify the pixels, and they can transcribe the audio and translate the languages ​​for us. We want all people in Africa to benefit from this information and have access to it, "said Cisse.

The new center aims to help solve the problems faced by farmers. They plan to integrate existing technology that helps Ugandan farmers identify diseased cbadava plants by taking pictures of them. The application, which works offline and in rural areas, identifies the disease and may recommend treatments. Making such applications accessible across the continent could greatly contribute to food security.

Other projects concern health care and allow the IA to count populations and plan their migration using satellite imagery.

But the new center will have to deal with how Africans access the Internet: mainly through low-performing cell phones.

That's why, among the projects studied, the center is looking for ways to master the AI ​​- which uses complex algorithms on large data sets – in order to run on basic cell phones.

Google also wants to make the AI ​​available offline, to make up for the difficulties of Internet access once or twice a day. Limited access to connectivity and high data costs require even greater simplification of artificial intelligence, as most Africans use phones with 512 MB of storage.

Another challenge is to develop AI to understand the 2,000 African languages ​​spoken on the continent.

"Africa is the most linguistically diverse place in the world. It would be nice if people could communicate beyond these language barriers. Many Africans speak up to three languages, but if we could have machines capable of speaking hundreds of languages, imagine who could speak to the 2.4 billion people who would live on the continent in the next 30 years. "

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