Nairobi, Aug. 18 -- It seems like professionals across East Africa cannot make it through a single day without discussions mentioning artificial intelligence. AI has become nearly as ubiquitous in the workplace as the internet, email, M-Pesa, Word, or Excel.

Certainly, there exist exciting potential uses for AI including scientific breakthroughs in medical research curing diseases or protecting ecological diversity to name a few. But more realistically, we face severe global distortions to economic and social stability as AI generates more and more revenue for billionaires while regular people get further and further left behind.

Additionally, most of us in the academic world lament something deeper in the collective dramatic decline in...