Australia’s energy operator warned that fast-growing AI data centers could create new power grid stability risks as compute demand rises across APAC. The post AI Data Centers Put Australia’s Power Grid Under New Pressure appeared first on TechRepublic.

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We tried Outback Steakhouse's $55 Bloomin Bundle meal deal. Between the steak and all the sides, it felt like a great deal for the four of us. Elliott Harrell My group tried a $55 family-style Bloomin' Bundle takeout meal deal from Outback Steakhouse. Some options felt a bit limited, but the ordering and pickup process was very smooth. Ultimately, the generous portions and well-cooked steak made this feel like a great value. My husband and I love going out to eat, but between paying $25 an hour for a babysitter and rising costs across the board, we haven't been to restaurants much the past few months. So, I was intrigued when I found out about Outback Steakhouse's family-style Bloomin' Bundle meals. They can be ordered for groups of four or six for takeout, and each comes with a protein (chicken, steak, or a combo of both), sides, a salad, and loaves of the chain's honey-wheat bread. Prices range between about $50 to $100. It seemed like it could be a great deal, and I loved the idea of having a full steak dinner at home without having to cook it. So, my husband and I invited my sister and brother-in-law over for dinner to try one of the chain's Bloomin' Bundle meals and see if it's actually a good value. The ordering process was straightforward, but some of my options felt limited. Elliott Harrell Outback Steakhouse's website felt extremely easy to navigate. Once I selected my nearest location, I just clicked the "Bloomin' Bundle Meals" section of the menu to get started. (Notably, these meals are not available at all Outback locations.) I chose the center-cut 6-ounce sirloin meal for four, declined paying extra to upgrade to Victoria's filet for an extra $20, and selected our "preferred cook temperature." I could only choose one, so I went with medium. My meal came with two sides, and choices were limited: Aussie fries, homestyle mashed potatoes, or "fresh seasonal veggies." I opted for fries and vegetables. It wasn't clear which vegetable I'd be getting, but I guessed it would be broccoli based on the photo next to my selection. Lastly, for salad, I chose the house over Caesar. I was able to select my dressing from a list of 10 options (I chose ranch) and remove some of the toppings (I did not). During checkout, there was an option to add on other appetizers and desserts, and I couldn't pass up the chain's signature Bloomin' Onion for an extra $11. Picking up the food was incredibly quick and easy. Elliott Harrell I ordered the meal during my lunch break and selected a 5 p.m. pickup time. It was great to be able to order ahead and know dinner was taken care of. After tax, our dinner bundle with an extra appetizer came to $71.43. I chose to add a 20% tip, bringing our total to $84.63. At 4:45 p.m., I got a text from Outback with a link to use to check in when we arrived. We got to the restaurant right after 5, parked in one of the designated pick-up spots, and checked in. Within a minute, our food was brought out to my car in a large paper bag. Typically, I've waited 10 to 15 minutes when picking up a takeout order from a restaurant, so this speediness was a pleasant surprise. Everything we needed for dinner was in the bag. Elliott Harrell The paper bag contained plastic silverware, a house salad, two loaves of bread, four steaks, fries, steamed broccoli, ketchup, butter, ranch, and the Bloomin' Onion with its famous dipping sauce. I was confused that the salad appeared to be in an oven-safe foil container, but the fried food came in plastic ones. Since I worried the fries and the Bloomin' Onion would get a bit soggy on the way home, I was especially disappointed that I couldn't just pop their containers into my oven later. We started with the salad and bread. Elliott Harrell We started our meal with Outback's signature brown bread, which was soft and tasted freshly baked. I appreciated that it came with four individual servings of butter — one for each of us. Both loaves were gone by the end of our meal. Then, we moved on to the house salad, which came topped with sliced cucumbers, red onions, cherry tomatoes, shredded cheese, and croutons. I wish there had been more toppings, though. It didn't seem like there were enough to balance out all the iceberg lettuce, which I'm not a huge fan of. The ranch dressing I selected came on the side and tasted great. I really liked how thick and creamy it was, and that it seemed to have a slight kick. After a bit of reheating, the rest of our dinner was served. Elliott Harrell Our fried food, the fries and Bloomin' Onion, did indeed get a tad soggy in transit, so I transferred them to cookie sheets so I could crisp them up in my oven before dinner. Although this meant waiting longer to eat, we all ultimately enjoyed the meal. All of the 6-ounce steaks were well-seasoned, tender, and cooked perfectly to the specified temperature. The crisped-up fries and Bloomin' Onion were great as well, especially with that tangy sauce. Although I was happy with broccoli, it would've been nice to know in advance which vegetable we'd be getting. That said, it seemed perfectly steamed, and I appreciated that it was quite plain, not drowned in a sauce or seasonings. The fried food certainly wasn't healthy, but the simple steamed broccoli and generous salad portion ultimately kept the meal from feeling too heavy or rich. Honestly, it felt pretty balanced. We appreciated the generous portions, but they weren't super great for leftovers. Elliott Harrell The sides — especially the salad — came in fairly large portions, and we didn't finish them all. Dressing the whole salad at once turned out to be a mistake. I ended up tossing the leftovers because I knew they'd be super soggy the next day. In the future, I'd let everyone serve themselves salad and dress it individually. We also ended up tossing the leftover french fries and Bloomin' Onion pieces because we already heated them up once, and I haven't found that fried foods reheat well the second day. Next time, I'd get mashed potatoes instead of fries, which I think would be easier to save and reheat the next day. In the end, the only thing we saved and ate later was the broccoli. It felt a bit wasteful. I'd order the Bloomin' Bundle meal again for its value and taste. Elliott Harrell I wish the fried food had come in better, easy-to-reheat containers and that we'd had more side-dish options. However, I still felt like the Bloomin' Bundle meal was a great deal. It offered a fairly substantial savings opportunity: a 6-ounce center-cut sirloin with two sides would have cost $17.99 à la carte. Adding a salad is an extra $5.99 per order, so the equivalent of what we got would have been $23.98 per person before tax and tip. In our Bloomin' Bundle order, meals (without the Bloomin' Onion, tax, and tip) came to $13.75 per person, more than $10 cheaper. When ordering à la carte, you can choose from more side options (such as a baked potato or rice). However, if you're cool with the basics — and your family likes their steak cooked the same way — the bundle still wins. Overall, the food was tasty, and our meal felt more balanced than what we'd usually get from other takeout spots. On top of that, the ordering and pickup process was easy, and eating steak takeout for this price felt like a little luxury. Read the original article on Business Insider

AI coding agent startup Niteshift has raised a $7 million seed round from a who's who of angels. It's betting companies will want power over, not lock-in with model makers.

Enterprise Document Intelligence [Vol.1 #5A] - Document signals (metadata, native TOC, source software) and page-level content (text vs scans, tables, images, columns, page profile) The post Beyond extract_text: The Two Layers of a PDF That Drive RAG Quality appeared first on Towards Data Science.

AI factories are changing what data-center infrastructure must do. Unlike traditional data centers, AI factories are built to manufacture intelligence at scale.... AI factories are changing what data-center infrastructure must do. Unlike traditional data centers, AI factories are built to manufacture intelligence at scale. They run power-dense training and inference workloads, increasingly support agentic and reasoning models, and must deliver predictable performance even as compute demand shifts rapidly. In this environment… Source

Emotionally mature children are curious, energized, and resilient, said psychologist Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson. Oscar Wong/Getty Images Gentle parenting, often confused with permissive parenting, has fallen out of favor. Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson, a psychologist, said the goal is to raise emotionally mature children. Parents can do this by offering protection, nurture, guidance, and limits. The past few years have been rough for gentle parenting. While the definition of gentle parenting is helping children learn consequences without fear-based tactics like yelling, some parents use it to mean permissive parenting: setting almost no boundaries for their kids. "Total freedom does not feel loving to a child, because they're in the business of trying to learn how to behave," Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson, a psychologist and author of the new book, "How to Raise an Emotionally Mature Child," told Business Insider. "You wouldn't want your child to not have any willingness to listen to other people — that wouldn't be doing them a service." Some parents think "gentle parenting" means letting kids do what they want without consequences. Antonio_Diaz/Getty Images Gibson, who also wrote the bestselling book "Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents," broadly defines emotional maturity as "the child having a light in them." Because they have a secure relationship with their parents, they feel energized in trying new things, knowing they have a safe home base when they might fail. "You could think of it like you're your child's first boss, first partner, first best friend," she said. "You're the prototype for so many different kinds of relationships that they're going to have in their life." Gibson shared the core facets of raising an emotionally mature child — none of which involve permissiveness. Nail down the basics: protection and nurture Protection includes intervening when interaction between siblings gets too rough. Halfpoint Images/Getty Images The first, most immediate duty of a parent is to protect their child, Gibson said. This obviously means protecting them from physical danger, but also emotional and interpersonal danger, she said. For example, passive parents, one of the four types of emotionally immature parents Gibson outlined in her previous book, might be able to shield their kids from obvious dangers like speeding cars, but fail to intervene if the other parent is volatile. True protection involves stepping in when you hear their older sibling tease too roughly or family members speaking aggressively to your kid. Of course, with all parenting styles — passive parenting included — the other core piece is nurture. "That's just a mammal thing," she said. Both humans and baby mammalian animals "are unable to grow without proper emotional nurturance, loving, affectionate, attentive care," she said. People with emotionally absent parents, for example, tend to grow up with lower self-esteem. Choose patient correction over punishment Young children need lots of patience and guidance — without foregoing limits, Gibson said. Arturo Peña Romano Medina/Getty Images The other two core parts of building emotional maturity in kids are guidance and limits. "Kids need guidance because they've never been on this earth before," she said. "No one's ever explained to them why it's rude to do this or that." A parent's role is to explain concepts like consequences and limits to their kids without screaming or punishments. Yelling at kids can give the illusion of effectiveness, Gibson said. "They may have a conditioned reaction, like being fearful of you, so they kind of calm down," she said. "They're keeping a very tense, kind of artificial control that's going to break down rather quickly." Instead, the best approach is patient correction. "Our job is to realize that Rome was not built in a day," Gibson said. "We're going to have to give them that guidance — 'we don't stand up in our chairs in restaurants' — over and over and over again until they learn it." It's also important to know when kids are just too young for certain expectations. Even if your four-year-old is more communicative than they were at three, it doesn't mean they're fully capable of sitting still for long stretches at a restaurant, Gibson said. It wouldn't make sense to punish them at that age. "It's not so much that the child needs limits as it is that the parent needs to recognize a small child's limitations," she said. Self-awareness helps you repair Saying sorry to your kids doesn't make them soft, Gibson said. mixetto/Getty Images As a parent, there will be times when you regret how you handled a situation. Gibson said it's similar to a marriage: even if you don't know what else to do in the moment, you know you're not happy with how you reacted, or that you just made the problem worse. Self-awareness is a huge first step. "Maybe you realize, 'Oh, I haven't eaten all day,' or maybe 'This is the 10th time he's bonked his little brother up the head with the toy truck,'" she said. The point is to understand why you lost your temper or resorted to harsh criticism. Then, it's up to you to reach out to your child and say you're sorry, whether it's for raising your voice or being too distracted to listen to them. Gibson said these interactions should mirror how all your relationships — and your child's future ones as an adult — should look. "You're treating your child the way you would a dear friend that you wanted to keep," she said. "I don't care how old you are, it increases your trust in the person who thinks enough of you to come back in and apologize, because you know that you matter to them." Read the original article on Business Insider

Most of the value in SpaceX's IPO is effectively a call option on the company's ambitious space data center plans.

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Pinterest is adding support for Amazon Storefronts, allowing creators to earn affiliate commissions more easily while showcasing their product recommendations in one place.

I traveled from Boston to San Antonio, and it was my first time visiting the Southern city. Rebecca Strong I'm a New Englander who was surprised by many things when I visited San Antonio for the first time. Many tourists visit the Texas city for its landmarks, but it also has incredible art and live music. The excellent locally produced wine and diverse range of cuisines took me by surprise, too. Ask a New Englander what comes to mind when they think about Texas, and they'll probably mention cowboy hats, tacos, and beer. Truth be told, I'm no exception. However, during one November trip from Boston to San Antonio, I learned that this vibrant, diverse city has so much more to offer. Locals even told me that their motto is, "Keep San Antonio lame," a play on their northern neighbor's slogan, "Keep Austin weird." By keeping the city's charm a secret, maybe San Antonians hope to protect its essence and ward off throngs of tourists. However, once you experience Alamo City's appeal, you'll probably have a hard time resisting the urge to spread the word. These are some of the most surprising things I found during my first trip to San Antonio. San Antonio never felt crowded despite having one of the largest populations in the US. The bustling Pearl District on the evening of a Día de Los Muertos celebration. Rebecca Strong San Antonio, which is home to about 1.5 million people, is the state's second-most populous city behind Houston and one of the most populous cities in the US.  It's also growing. Over the past few years, thousands of people have been moving to San Antonio. Almost all of my Uber drivers told me they'd moved to San Antonio within the last five to 10 years. Some came from other states — like Missouri, Nevada, Michigan, and California — and a few hailed from faraway countries, like France and Kenya. Despite the fact that San Antonio has such a massive population, the city streets didn't feel crowded when I was there. From the time I arrived until I left, I never hit traffic. German immigrants who came to San Antonio in the 19th century left a lasting influence on the city. The menu at Schilo’s in San Antonio. Rebecca Strong German immigrants arrived in San Antonio in the 1840s, and by 1990, more than 17% of Texas' population claimed German ancestry, making Germans one of the largest national-origin groups in the state.  I definitely noticed the German influence during my trip.  For example, Schilo's — a deli that serves German fare like bratwurst, Wiener schnitzel, and potato pancakes — opened in 1917, making it the oldest continuously operating restaurant in San Antonio.  Also, Beethoven Männerchor, a German singing society and community dedicated to preserving German heritage and culture in San Antonio since 1867, hosts a large Oktoberfest celebration every year. The people I met in San Antonio went out of their way to be friendly. Walking over the Navarro Street Bridge in downtown San Antonio. Rebecca Strong Maybe it's because I'm from Boston, where people are known to be straightforward and standoffish, but San Antonians' kindness left me speechless.  Uber drivers struck up conversations from the front seat and provided recommendations for my stay, unlike many drivers back home who often don't engage with passengers.  When I got lost trying to find an art museum downtown, a local spotted my confused expression and offered me directions. Later that day, a random person at the Tower of the Americas, a 750-foot-tall observation tower, noticed me struggling to take a selfie and offered to snap a picture for me. Multiple times, pedestrians complimented my outfit or greeted me as they passed by. Restaurant servers also seemed especially warm and welcoming, often going above and beyond to learn more about my preferences. The state has an abundance of locally produced wine, and the ones I tried rivaled those I've had in California. A tasting of Roussane, rosé, and mourvèdre at Re:Rooted 2010. Rebecca Strong Texas is mainly known for its beer and spirits, but it's among state with the largest number of wineries, just behind places like California, Oregon, Washington, and New York.  I was pleasantly surprised to find exceptional locally produced wine in San Antonio. Many of the state's wineries are located just an hour north of the city in the Texas Hill Country, a region with ideal conditions for growing grapes.  Just like the famous winemaking regions of Burgundy and the Loire Valley, Texas has some mineral-rich limestone soil that enhances the wines' structures and aromas. I can speak to this firsthand. The Texas-produced wines I sampled at Re:Rooted 210 Urban Winery in San Antonio had balance and complexity that rivaled the wines I've tried in Napa. The dining options are incredibly diverse, spanning far beyond Tex-Mex and barbecue. Mediterranean small plates at Jardín. Rebecca Strong I expected to find mostly Tex-Mex and barbecue in San Antonio, but thanks to the city's spectacular cultural diversity, I could choose from a wide range of cuisines.  There was French at Brasserie Mon Chou Chou, Caribbean at Mi Roti, and family-style Asian fusion at Best Quality Daughter. In 2017, UNESCO designated San Antonio as a Creative City of Gastronomy due to its confluence of cuisines and culinary heritage. It's the second US city to receive this designation, after Tucson, Arizona. Part of the reason San Antonio has such an impressive food scene is that the city has its own Culinary Institute of America. Many graduates stick around to open their own restaurants or work at some of the city's award-winning establishments. San Antonio is an art lover's mecca, home to street art, museums, and galleries. One of many downtown murals created as part of the San Antonio Street Art Initiative. Rebecca Strong Most tourists flock to San Antonio to see landmarks like the Alamo, the River Walk, and the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. So, I'm sure many of them are surprised as I was to find a heap of museums and galleries, too. History buffs will swoon over the Briscoe Western Art Museum, which preserves Western art, artifacts, and culture; the McNay Art Museum, Texas' first modern-art museum; and the San Antonio Museum of Art, a collection of ancient Roman, Greek, and Egyptian art.  As someone who prefers a more hands-on experience, I was blown away by Hopscotch, an immersive gallery. When I was there, installations included optical illusions, laser graffiti, and a kaleidoscope machine. While exploring, I also spotted several stunning murals created by local artists and learned that the San Antonio Street Art Initiative has been working on building the largest outdoor gallery in Texas since 2018. The River Walk spans about 15 miles, which is way longer than I expected. A view of the River Walk from the Navarro Street bridge. Rebecca Strong Without a doubt, the River Walk is one of San Antonio's most distinctive features. This waterway reminded me of Venice. It's lined with restaurants, bars, museums, shops, and biking trails, making it a popular tourist destination. I always imagined I'd be able to traverse the whole River Walk in a day, so I was shocked to find that it spans nearly 15 miles, from north of the city center down to the area around Mission Espada. I heard so many different types of live music throughout the city. A live guitarist serenades guests at The Ambler along the River Walk. Rebecca Strong One of the first things I noticed during my trip was that San Antonio's music scene seems to be thriving.  There are a lot of venues that offer live music, and you can find just about every genre here, particularly in Southtown, the arts and entertainment district.  It's also home to the Aztec Theatre, a concert venue that's been open since 1926 and conveniently located along the River Walk. "South Texas has a huge Latinx population, which means tons of salsa, bachata, Tejano, and mariachi music," Jed Craddock, a local musician and founder of Earbender Studios, told me. "But one of the things I love most about San Antonio is how diverse our music scene is. I can see a swing and rockabilly band at Sam's Burger Joint, Andrew Bird and Iron & Wine at the Tobin Center, or an amazing local artist on the St. Mary's Strip," he added.  Dia de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, is a huge deal in San Antonio. An ofrenda dedicated to Emma Koehler, the late founder of Pearl Brewery, at the Hotel Emma. Rebecca Strong When I booked my trip, I didn't realize my travel dates coincided with the city's legendary Día de los Muertos festivities, nor did I realize what a huge deal this Mexican holiday is in San Antonio.  I spotted ofrendas, altars designed to honor deceased loved ones, almost everywhere I looked throughout the city, from the hotel lobby where I was staying to the San Antonio Botanical Garden. San Antonians go all out in celebrating this Mexican tradition, with lively processions, parades, and festivals.  The park at Pearl Brewery hosted an enormous celebration complete with stilt walkers, live music, face painting, art installations, and many ofrendas.  SpiritLandia featured a River Walk Day of the Dead parade, and people also attended Muertos Fest, a multiday cultural event, in downtown San Antonio. This story was originally published on January 30, 2023, and most recently updated on June 10, 2026. Read the original article on Business Insider

A Walmart automated distribution center in Mexico. Bloomberg/Getty Images Walmart's investments in physical AI are paying off in terms of raw speed. The retailer's automated distribution network is better at organizing freight for faster unloading. US division CEO David Guggina said workers can now do in minutes what previously took them hours. America's biggest retailer is on a mission to become America's fastest. One key piece of Walmart's mission is automating its supply chain. The retailer has spent the past several years plowing cash into building new facilities equipped with an army of robots, coordinated by AI. That money is paying off in terms of raw speed. What makes these distribution centers especially powerful is that they use store-level data to direct robots to arrange pallets, making it easier for workers to restock aisles, Walmart US CEO David Guggina told the Oppenheimer Consumer Growth and E-commerce conference on Tuesday. Store workers used to spend hours unloading a truck. Now they can do so in a fraction of that time. "Moving to intelligently layered pallets allows us to unload that trailer in minutes," Guggina said. The distribution centers could also know which pallets contain the most urgent supplies for a given store and load those pallets onto the truck last, so they can be unloaded first, he said. Guggina also said the company expects to have 16 of these next-generation distribution centers by the end of the year. The combination of automation and inventory visibility is helping the company run a better supply chain, improve stores, and cut costs. Those savings, he said, allow Walmart to continue investing in lower prices for customers. Read the original article on Business Insider

India’s VivaTech 2026 role gives its AI strategy a global stage as enterprises across APAC weigh regional AI partnerships, infrastructure control, and dependence on foreign chips and cloud platforms. The post India Brings Its AI Pitch to VivaTech 2026 appeared first on TechRepublic.

Lium, a startup formerly known as Astromind, today announced the launch of an “agentic harness” that helps large language models dig into the most complex and messiest datasets. The launch comes after it closed on $5.5 million in seed funding from investors that included SJF Ventures, Wavemaker 360, Reach Capital and GC&H Investments. The Dallas-based […] The post Lium raises $5.5M to unlock complex scientific data for AI models appeared first on SiliconANGLE.

The ACLU is suing two Florida police departments over the arrest of a Fort Myers man in a child-abduction case, saying officers treated a flawed face-recognition match as a near-certain ID.

Microsoft reportedly cut 200 to 400 Azure jobs in China as US and Chinese data rules tighten around cloud operations. The post Microsoft Reportedly Cuts Hundreds of Azure Jobs in China appeared first on TechRepublic.

Researchers report a "serendipitous" discovery while watching videos of crowds: an inexplicable bias toward counterclockwise turning that may be rooted in biology.

With an initial capacity of 24 megawatts, the innovative data center uses seawater as a natural cooling system.

Mauritius set out its national AI strategy in 2018, the first by an African country. Since then over a dozen African states have adopted national AI policies of some sort or another. As a national policy plan, an AI strategy typically sets out the priorities and aspirations in achieving certain policy objectives. At the continental level, the African Union has adopted an AI strategy. Kenya and Ethiopia have tabled draft AI laws that set out how the countries want AI governed. Morocco, Egypt and Nigeria are already mulling the idea of AI legislation. The trend shows that policymakers are slowly turning their attention from unchecked enthusiasm about AI to reckoning with governing AI risks. As technology law and policy scholars, our research explores the dynamics of and approaches to the governance of emerging technologies like AI. Our recent work explores the origins, nature and scope of AI governance initiatives in Africa. We found a number of common threads in recent policy and legislative exercises. One such trend is for African states to adopt the European Union’s approach to AI regulation. But this needs to be called into question. No doubt, Africa needs AI legislation. It will be vital to regulate the development and use of AI systems that pose risks to individual rights, social cohesion or even national security. Legislation can also create new regulatory bodies that oversee AI rules or other relevant laws such as data protection. Kenya’s AI Bill, for instance, institutes the AI Commissioner as well as the AI Advisory Committee as regulators of AI systems in the country. But the effort to turn AI policies into legislation requires reckoning for two reasons. More laws, less implementation One concern is whether the continent really needs a new layer of digital laws while preceding pieces of tech legislation remain largely unenforced. AI policies were meant to coordinate AI development at the national level. While some countries committed to responsible AI development, others have yet to set up or fund institutions that were to give the strategies meaning. This points to an endemic problem in Africa: lack of implementation. Data protection is a case in point. Many African countries have enacted data protection legislation but are yet to install oversight bodies, or those established lack the resources to enforce laws. Legislating for AI in this environment risks producing laws that will largely be aspirational in the same way as the strategies before them: they are there but aren’t implemented. Europeanisation of African law The second concern relates to the heavy reliance on European standards in fashioning emergent AI laws. Both Kenya’s and Ethiopia’s AI bills adopt the European Union’s risk-based approach. This involves regulating AI systems based on the nature of risk they pose. Those posing “unacceptable risks” are banned altogether and those with lower risks have to meet requirements. Transplanting European standards is not new in African states’ attempt to regulate new and emerging technologies. The first generation of data protection and cybercrime laws in Africa drew directly from formative legal instruments in Europe. But rarely have such legal transplanting exercises been informed by or taken into account local contexts, interests and concerns. Perhaps this is why data protection standards aren’t implemented effectively. The concern is not that the EU’s approach is inherently problematic. It’s why African states fail to envision an approach informed by local realities. AI regulation in Africa should not emerge from a compulsion to signal regulatory modernity. Laws calibrated for mature digital markets, well-resourced regulators, and rights aware consumer populations do not translate cleanly into contexts defined by thin institutional capacity, informal data flows, and populations with limited ability to exercise the rights those laws nominally protect. Grounding regulation in reality African states need AI laws based on a concrete and honest reckoning with what AI is actually doing or could do to the continent. Fashioning AI regulation should be preceded by critical reflection on the following key questions: How is it being deployed by technology companies? How is information and misinformation spread on the continent? How is it being used in public services? Who benefits when governments deploy AI in social protection, policing, or public administration? Who controls the data? Large technology companies, many of them headquartered in the United States, China, or Europe, are able to collect and process vast amounts of data generated by African users. This is often done under terms of service that most users neither read nor meaningfully consent to, and with little accountability to African regulators. Who bears the harms? Who bears the risk when those systems get it wrong? Whose interests are unprotected? AI-powered content moderation systems, for example, perform poorly in African languages and local contexts. Imperatives of moratorium As the AI hype continues, African states are already deploying AI in different sectors, including healthcare. Ethiopia and Rwanda, for example, used AI in TB and cervical cancer screening. But it’s happening in a regulatory vacuum. In the absence of a robust regulatory regime, AI is likely to cause considerable harm to individuals and societies. While AI legislation might be a promising step forward in filling the regulatory void, this effort appears to be restricted only to a few countries whose approach is yet to move past European parameters. Policymakers should rather prioritise pursuing a more considered and contextualised approach to address AI risks meaningfully. Until then, a moratorium on the use of high-risk AI systems in sensitive domains such as healthcare should be seriously considered. The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Memes at Google; Microsoft wants to make its new AI assistant addictive; and manipulating Reddit.