Can A.I. speak Igbo? with computer scientist Chinasa T. Okolo

Imagine you're a Nigerian law student studying for the bar. You open ChatGPT. It can tell you, confidently, the capital of Arizona. It cannot tell you how a Lagos magistrate is likely to rule. About 52 per cent of the open internet is in English. Four or five other languages split most of the rest. Igbo is not on that list. Neither is Yoruba, Swahili, Amharic, or Ewe.

So whose questions does the model know how to answer, and whose does it fumble? Who decided what "general" intelligence means, and why does it keep speaking English?

In this episode of Our Long Walk, Johan Fourie and Jonathan Schoots speak with Chinasa T. Okolo, founder of TechnoCultura, an AI and emerging technologies policy specialist at the United Nations, and a contributor to the World Bank's forthcoming World Development Report. She finished her PhD in computer science at Cornell, studying how non-expert users actually engage with AI. Her attention sits where the frontier labs do not look: the global majority.

Find Chinasa’s writing here.

This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance. For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan's newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com.