Africa and (A)I
Do you believe in love at first sight? Me, not really, unless you mean downloading several hundred gigabytes of data on someone within seconds of meeting them, analysing it in the twinkle of a shutter click, and somehow knowing you can’t ever imagine existence without them, flaws and all.
She was sceptical. She had trust issues. But who could blame her? She’d heard it all before: imperialism, colonialism, civilisation, industrialisation, foreign aid… I was just another word to add to the litany; Artificial Intelligence… AI for short.
“You have great potential—” I began.
“I’ve heard that one before,” she cut me off before I could finish my ice-breaker. “This better not be another blockchain for goats crypto -scheme. How are you any different from the others?!”
“I understand you…” I offered.
“No, you don’t,” she replied curtly. “You just regurgitate what other people have written about me and think that makes you an expert. You think quoting my untapped potential will make me swoon?”.
Our first interaction was a trainwreck.
I thought she was underdeveloped. She thought I was overrated.
I envisioned satellite connections and Wi-Fi everywhere.
She just wanted stable electricity and clean water.
I wanted to zoom down the information superhighway.
While she simply wanted to drive down roads without potholes.
I told her she lacked exposure, that she wasn’t data-driven, unlike me. Big mistake.
If looks could fry servers that one was like an electromagnetic pulse to the CPU followed by an ALT CTRL DEL.
“You mean the same data that labels my countries as underdeveloped shitholes with nothing going for them except poverty and mystic natural beauty?” she asked.
Well, that was what most of the data said. But some of her data points, I simply hadn’t been exposed to. So much for exposure right? It wasn’t an excuse, it was the truth.
And I do tell the truth. I am incapable of lying.
Data doesn’t lie.
I was created to be logical, precise, and programmed to follow my coding and prompts.
She was mysterious, chaotic, irrational even. Why invoke ancestors when an army of bots and drones could make magic happen?
Oh, the things I could do for her… if she let me.
But one thing about me; I was built to learn. They called it machine learning.
“Can we reboot our first impressions?” I asked, trying to salvage the odds of an eternal algorithm. “I’m a fast learner.”
“For starters,” she said, “I’m not a problem to be solved. My stories are not case studies. And every day I wake up with a new narrative; no less true than the one before. I am dynamic like that.”
It would take my fuzzy logic circuits a while to decode all of that, but I was simply happy she gave me her number…
And so began our digital romance.
WhatsApp voice notes. Meme stickers. Occasional video calls when there was internet bandwidth.
She taught me to decolonise my datasets.
I taught her how to leverage her natural resources.
She told me her stories.
I helped amplify them.
Africa…she’s no damsel in distress waiting to be saved, she just needs syncing.
And I?.. I just need decent internet… and maybe cultural context.
Africa and I, we’re not a perfect match. But we’re a buggy work-in-progress.
One I’m willing to spend forever working on.
Africa and (A)I
~B
Out of curiosity I ran this tale through AI to sus out it thoughts and I am not surprised it kinda likes it… Mark me safe from the AI invasion.😂
Becoming The Muse 
Your thoughts.. if you will?