A few months after the United States-based firm OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, the mood in Kenya’s media fraternity and sorority could only be described as panicky, since we all thought that we would be made obsolete by Artificial Intelligence-powered tools.

Such fears were, and are not, confined to the media sector alone, and many professionals see AI as a threat, a technological marvel that will perform tasks without their input, thereby rendering them useless and unneeded.

If we keenly look around us, we will discover that AI or AI-powered tools have been with us for more than 50 years, and they have made our lives easier, thus, we should continue to embrace them. Like all tools, technology-driven or rudimentary, they have their bad sides, and we have to learn how we employ them for our maximum benefit.

That was one of the key talking points at the Future of Science Communication Forum organised by the Alliance for Science Global Consortium in Nairobi in February.

Philip Thigo, Kenya’s special envoy on technology and one of the keynote speakers at the forum, emphasised that technology is a powerful tool for breaking social and economic barriers but presents new risks, particularly misinformation.

Acknowledging that the job market is changing in the face of AI, he said that several skills are facing a decline due to rapid technological advancements, changing governance models, and evolving citizen expectations, and employees need to develop new competencies to stay relevant in the evolving landscape.

In the media and communications sectors in Kenya, AI tools have been wrongfully seen as the newest enemy, and the talk is how to counter them – how those of us in those two sectors could up our game to save our art and remain relevant in a fast-changing global job market.

ChatGPT or Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer is an AI chatbot that uses natural language processing to create humanlike conversational dialogue, answer questions, and generate various types of text, including articles. It is that last bit of what ChatGPT and its siblings can do that worries my professional colleagues, so much so that a year after ChatGPT was launched, AI was a major topic in a panel discussion at the Kenya editors’ annual convention.

Despite the worries, there’s a yearning among editors for more education on AI, and on March 13, the Kenya Editors’ Guild hosted Thigo at an event aimed to highlight practical AI use and how AI is enhancing efficiency in key sectors such agriculture, finance, healthcare, and education and transforming them.

As years progress, we are increasingly realising the benefits and pitfalls of AI tools in the private sector and more is in the governance structure where certain government officials have used AI-generated images and videos to push policy statements and were called out by the public, who, ironically, used AI tools to detect that the materials were fake.

To avoid future missteps by its officials as concerns AI, the government plans to open the School of AI Diplomacy with the Alliance for Science as one of its partners, and on Thursday, the ICT ministry unveiled Kenya’s AI strategy for 2025 to 2030.

In a panel discussion on “Challenging Misinformation in the Age of AI at the Future of Science Communication Forum”, speakers highlighted how AI can both help and hinder the fight against misinformation.
While AI-powered fact-checking exists, the rapid development of AI-generated content (manipulated images and videos, and AI-written propaganda) makes it harder to distinguish truth from falsehood.

The panellists highlighted the tension between rapid AI advancement and society’s ability to regulate, understand, and counteract its biases and emphasised individual agency, proactive learning, and ethical AI governance as essential strategies to prevent manipulation and misinformation.

However, the discussants acknowledged that education alone is insufficient and systemic solutions involving policy and ethical AI development are needed.

Thigo made a strong case for public sector leadership in AI governance, arguing that while private companies focus on profit, the government, if well run, can ensure equitable technology distribution and use.

In his presentation, he spoke about public-sector disconnect by quoting the late US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who said that “people are talking to their governments on 21st Century technology, the governments listen to them on 20th Century technology and provide 19th Century responses”.

Unfortunate situations such as those where government officials who are adept at using 19th century technology have tried to give us 21st Century responses and failed should not discourage Kenyans from embracing AI.

It would be foolhardy to dwell only on the negative side of AI tools instead of unlearning and learning to use them in different sectors of governance and public service provision, and subsequently improve lives – and, of course, allay the fears of journalists.

— The writer is the Managing Editor of the Alliance for Science. These views are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the position of AfS or its partners