Webinar 1: Ubuntu and Artificial Intelligence
This webinar explores Ubuntu not as a philosophy to be studied from a distance, but as a placeholder for natural human intelligence (Hoffman, 2024) — an ethical foundation for the AI systems we engage with and build today.
Africans are very familiar with Ubuntu as a moral imperative handed down by our elders that guides us in the essence of being human. As an ontological and epistemological philosophy that informs our daily lives, this holistic way of sense-making underpins our continual interconnectedness with each other, nature, and the spiritual world (Mangena, 2016). Intelligence, the way we engage with the world, is therefore not purely biological but intrinsically relational.
The prominence of AI poses many questions about how we engage in both the digital and analogue world. As Africans, we are particularly concerned about how AI has datafied our personhood, and issues of bias, privacy, and equity stay at the front of mind. What if Ubuntu could help frame how we think about and work with Artificial Intelligence? Could Ubuntu shape how we create and engage with AI systems? Is there an intersectionality between Ubuntu and AI ethics, the latter framed as a one-size-fits-all ethical perspective (Magale, 12)?
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