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In this episode:
What happens when AI doesn’t understand you?
For millions of people across Africa, speaking a language that AI doesn’t recognise can be a barrier to accessing services like healthcare and participating in the digital economy.
Pelonomi Moiloa is CEO of Lelapa AI, a research and product lab building language AI for a continent with 2,000+ languages. Named one of TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023, Pelonomi unpacks the technical and linguistic challenges she and her team are up against - from the data collection hurdles unique to oral cultures, to the compute constraints on the African continent.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Why mainstream AI struggles with African languages
- The creative approaches Lelapa AI is pioneering since scraping the internet or the archives isn't an option
- What Pelonomi really thinks about being called one of the most influential people in AI
About Pelonomi Moiloa
Pelonomi Moiloa is CEO of Lelapa AI, a socially-grounded research and product lab driving AI for Africans by Africans. A biomedical and electrical engineer by training, Pelonomi has spent almost a decade deriving insights from data to address complex problems.
Learn more about Lelapa AI: https://lelapa.ai
Follow Lelapa AI on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lelapa-ai/
Follow Pelonomi Moiloa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pelonomi-moiloa
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