July 2024: Olympics, Ghosts and Comfort

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Olympics, Ghosts and Comfort

written by Aurélie

Paris Olympics

Social media has been all over the Olympic games of late, and it got me curious as to how many Sierra Leonean 🇸🇱 athletes there are in Paris. As it turns out, four are competing in swimming, judo and athletics. Their vibrant and culturally inspired outfits make them stand out, and are deserving of a gold medal 🏅for style.

AI gurus like UBI

The rollout of ChatGPT prompted persistent fears of AI replacing human jobs. Sam Altman, founder of Open AI and chief cheerleader of the boom in artificial intelligence, recently voiced his view on how we can achieve social justice in a world in which this occurs.

It’s impossible to truly have equality of opportunity without some version of guaranteed income.
Sam Altman

Altman and his tech colleagues invested $60 million to launch the Unconditional Income Study, the largest U.S. study on UBI to date. It showed, among other insights, that unconditional cash:

• helps stabilize families who live on the edge, preventing them from tumbling off (NYTimes)
• provides flexibility (Bloomberg)
• has benefits that have nothing to do with AI (Vox)

Fun with flags

Want to impress your friends during the Olympic Games? The South African flag cleverly includes parts of five different flags, including that of Sierra Leone. Flag nerds know this, of course, thanks to Sheldon’s vexillology class.

Moral discomfort

You might think you can trust your gut to tell right from wrong, but the friction of social change shows that you can’t. A compelling text about our distorted moral compass, BLTs, and Buster Keaton.

Sad truth

One in four women worldwide will experience at least one incident of sexual violence in her lifetime (WHO). This risk changes dramatically while migrating from Africa via the Mediterranean route, where nearly half of the women and children interviewed after making the voyage reported being raped during the journey (UNICEF). A basic income pilot reduced violence against women in Kenya.

Biased ghosts

Ghosts are strange artifacts that result from flawed training data or algorithms. One haunting example is the absence of representation. When thousands of photos of white children but few of black children are tagged as “girls,” black girls disappear from generated images. This eerie absence underscores the need for high-quality, diverse data in AI. But Jon Snow saw it coming: data winter is coming.

My World in Data

165,514

One of my fondest memories of Sierra Leone, which I reminisce about from my flat in Geneva, is enjoying tea from our team member Mabel’s business. She’s part of a thriving entrepreneurial community of 165,514 registered businesses in 2022. That’s about one business for every 52 people.

My World in News

• Silicon Valley companies should ramp up investments in UBI programs. (The New York Times)
• In Singapore, 75 low-income families get cash with no strings attached. (The Straits Times)
• The case for cash transfers and why it has bipartisan support. (Bloomberg)
• Oregon will most likely vote on a statewide UBI program. (Oregon Rebate)
• UBI restored a bit of capitalism’s forgotten promise. (Vox)
• Basic Income provides flexibility. (Bloomberg)
• UBI reduced violence against women. (Fast Company)
• Never mind UBI, what we need is Universal Basic Vegetables. (Unread)

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