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I learned things about actor Chadwick Boseman that I did not know prior to his death, namely how intentional he was with every aspect of his work and his explicit choice to focus on impact. That commitment is what led to playing Jackie Robinson, James Brown, Thurgood Marshall and Black Panther. Boseman’s goal, said agent Michael Greene, was to make films that exalt black people and bring light to the world. Boseman and the Black Panther It meant a lot to a lot of people, from those who had never seen a black superhero before to children who held funerals for Black Panther with their Avengers action figures last week.
Director Ryan Coogler explained in detail this week how comprehensive Boseman’s contribution was to the development of the Black Panther – how he helped decide that Wakandans would speak the African Xhosa language, participated in auditions for supporting roles, shaped the script, and insisted that Black Panther speak with an African accent because he wanted to portray him as someone “whose dialect had not been conquered by West.”
But the film not only produced the most popular black superhero the world has ever seen, and it became one of the highest-grossing films in history. He also presented to the collective imagination a world in which Africans are the most technologically advanced people on the planet. It was the first depiction of Afrofuturism and black technologists that most audiences had seen in a major movie and a marked departure from common depictions of Africans dominated by outsiders.
the Black Panther presents a vision of a place called Wakanda, but it has also inspired the idea of building technology in the spirit of Wakanda. On Tuesday, rapper Akon released plans to build what he calls a real-life Wakanda on 2,000 acres of the Senegalese coast. He first shared his concept of a futuristic and technologically advanced city in 2018 and said that it will welcome members of the African diaspora. the Washington Post reports that the project has secured $ 4 billion of the $ 6 billion investment needed to build Akon City.
But building technology with Wakanda values doesn’t require vibranium or billions of dollars. the Black Panther is a story of family drama and the battle between Killmonger and T’Challa, but a key conflict is whether technology should be used for conquest or to uplift people and promote human progress. That fight should sound familiar to anyone following the controversies that are brewing around issues such as data privacy, surveillance, the ethics of artificial intelligence, the need for a more diverse tech industry, and the growing power of companies. big tech companies. These questions are far from resolved in our world, but the people of Wakanda finally decided to prioritize the good of humanity. When Wakanda chooses to share its technology with the rest of the world, King T’Challa tells the United Nations: “We must find a way to take care of each other as if we were one tribe.”
You can see similar attitudes about technology at work that African AI researchers have introduced in recent months.
Harvard University researcher Sabelo Mhlambi is exploring the ethical impacts of artificial intelligence in the developing world. In July, he presented a human rights framework for automated decision-making systems based on Ubuntu’s African philosophy. This restorative justice framework was created by leaders like Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu and treats the interconnectedness of humanity as a universal truth. Mhlambi claims that “digital colonialism and AI-enabled surveillance capitalism will not preserve the human dignity of all” and suggests that Ubuntu serves as the foundation for AI technology policy and governance.
“The perceived infallibility and supremacy of rationality, especially when administered through machines, exacerbates the marginalization of those in society whose exclusion has been rationalized or deemed ‘productive,'” Mhlambi writes in an article on the framework.
Anti-colonial AI, which seeks to avoid algorithmic exploitation and algorithmic oppression, is also in accordance with the Wakandan principles. Researchers have also advocated for queering AI to bring more equitable science and technology to the world.
Other recent examples of related work by Afro-descendant researchers:
Beyond the contributions of Black AI researchers, scholars have recently introduced concepts such as indigenous artificial intelligence and data feminism, as well as the whiteness of artificial intelligence, which examines the widespread erasure of people of color from representations of robots and artificial intelligence in science fiction and popular culture.
Throughout the arc of history, science fiction tends to influence technology. Killer robots have shaped public sentiment around AI, Return to the future is the reason people hope to have a flying car one day, and Alexa was inspired by Star trek.
the Black Panther defends technology for the good of humanity, and the inhabitants of Wakanda mock the colonizers. I have always been struck by how Boseman’s King T’Challa is depicted in the final scenes of the film sharing Wakanda’s technology with the nations of the world and with the black children of Oakland.
Wakanda is an imaginary place and vibranium does not exist, but the collective dream of technology that empowers and lifts people is real, as is the rapid growth of the technology sector in Africa and the growing number of African developers, according to the Report. Octoverse 2019 from GitHub. Whatever happens to him Black Panther Sequel to initiatives like Akon City, the spirit of Wakanda is alive among people who are passionate about making technology that improves human life and eliminates oppression.
