UJ History Dept

'Keynotes' plenary underway, opening the #SAHS2024 conference @SAHistSoc

The 29th Southern African Historical Society conference is underway @go2uj under the theme "History at the Precipice: Continuity, Change and Crises in Southern Africa". Join us over the course of the next three days to listen to new and exciting research on the region. #SAHS2024

The revised programme of the 2024 SAHS is available tinyurl.com/yyk6btch

Join us for Khumisho Moguerane's book launch @LoveBooksJozi with @JacanaMedia on June 3rd

A final extension for abstract submissions for 2024 SAHS Conf has been granted 'til April 15th. Submit via sahs.org.za @SAHistSoc

Reminder: the 29 Feb deadline for abstract submissions for the 2024 @SAHistSoc Biennial Conference, hosted by the UJ History Department is fast approaching . Submit abstracts here: sahs.org.za/event/2024-sah…

CFP out for the 29th Biennial @SAHistSoc Conference hosted by the UJ Department of History @go2uj @UjHumanities, 26-28 June, 2024.

Marwala: fundamentally we need better schools and schooling.

Breckenridge: we're trapped, in South Africa, between liberal model of privacy and inability to deliver the necessary infrastructure

Ballim: the question of who controls data is key and remains at the heart of legitimate anxieties on the African continent and elsewhere.

Breckenridge: the bureaucracy needs to process paperwork better otherwise little else (including AI) will work.

Marwala on exclusionary aspects of AI: easier to change algorithms than society

Marwala: was a member of 4IR gov commission: South African investment in social capital (literacy, skills) and AI in general needs urgent attention and incentivisation if deindustrialisation slide is to be reversed.

Marwala: new economic order is undoubtedly replacing proletariat (in Marx's terms) with machines. We have to handle this looming economic crisis.

Marwala: Africa's problem is one of lag; leapfrog opportunities undeniable, rather than a worry. Democratisation of machine learning tech has happened, data asymmetry is the only problem.

Marwala: AI fundamentally about maximising resource acquisition (the 'modernisation of productive resources' in Marx's sense), as with other historic technologies.

Ballim: notes similarities between machine learning & alchemy/divination; perils of 'algorithmization of society', surveillance, now extended to African phenotypes. Key question: who holds the levers of power and what are the biases of these models of machine learning?

Breckenridge: dangers are real - privacy worries, but also a leapfrog fetish, where African states embrace AI rather than building paperwork skills at heart of effective government; risk that the poor will be completely locked out of opportunities (including taking on debt)

Breckenridge: The role of finance in driving AI systems is key, but not all bad: controversially providing many Africans with unprecedented access to credit, having previously been heavily circumscribed under colonialism

Breckenridge: The problem of the history of the extraversion of science on African continent understandably behind the ongoing anxiety about Africa's place in 4IR. #4IR #UJ