African Hub for AI Safety, Security and Peace

This project is a part of the Artificial Intelligence for Development (AI4D) program, a five-year partnership between IDRC and the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to support policy, innovations and expanded leadership to spur safe and responsible artificial intelligence (AI) development and use in Africa. The vision of the partnership is to support an inclusive, responsible AI ecosystem that improves quality of life for all in Africa and beyond.

This project will support the latest entry into the AI4D-FCDO network of multidisciplinary AI labs across sub-Saharan Africa. The focus of this lab will be on understanding the most significant safety and security risks that stem from the proliferation of AI on the continent and on working to mitigate them through a variety of approaches from technical to political. This will be accomplished by deepening knowledge on the large-scale risks of AI in Africa and innovating home-grown tools to help detect and mitigate these risks; strengthening capacity of students, practitioners and policymakers to understand and respond to the safety and security threats of AI in the African region, including through testing and evaluation; and shaping African governance on AI safety, security and peace.

The lab will also collaborate with the recently established Global Centre for AI Governance. This connection strengthens the policy research and influence activities of the project, constituting a unique combination of technical capacities and policy engagement, which significantly increases the potential to have impact at scale.

The project will be one of three that will receive funding to purchase on-premises compute as part of a first-stage learning activity. The goal will be to examine questions such as the relationship between compute and realized demand; the difficulties associated with procurement and set-up; training on maintenance and use; and the set-up and management of sharing compute resources with other labs across the continent.