TheLand
VIP
Somalia’s government doesn’t really matter. It probably never has. We survived long before it and we still do today. Our population has grown, we have more educated people than ever, more wealth than ever, the list goes on and on. The average Somali person in Somalia is no worse off than the average Ethiopian or Kenyan, yet they have much stronger governments and we have less infrastructure and a much smaller GDP. We complain a lot but we are survivors. We are more egalitarian. Nomads. Born anarchists you might even say. Our culture seems naturally resistant to any kind of centralization and order. Does Somalia’s current situation and governance/development issues even matter then, or are we completely looking at things in the wrong way and fighting the wrong fight? The world is changing and will continue to change in unimaginable ways (not even hyperbolic). We have something today for the first time in human history that isn’t human (or divine) that can think and communicate with us in human language. AI (not just chat bots but an entire technological system) will transform the world in unimaginable ways and I have a very strong intuition that it will level the playing field for places and people like us. We are thinking in a way that might just be outdated and reliant on how the world currently looks but will not look in the next few years. Some people here have hinted at an AI government for Somalia, but I think it can go much further than that. AI will allow us to educate our people at a much larger scale and much more rapidly with all the smart phones in Somalia and the telecom infrastructure that we already have. There are deep sea fiber-optic cables for high-speed internet for years already in Bossaso, Berbera and Mogadishu. We will have access to powerful technology that previously only western nations and governments did. Knowledge and skills will be democratized in ways we can’t even fathom right now. There is no reason to despair, because we might actually be in the best position of all. We have access to the west, but if some sort of collapse were to happen as a result of the double-edged sword of AI, we will also have access back home to remote places where most people can’t get to. Think about it, right now AI can make novel drugs, but it can also make biological weapons and viruses, some of which will likely be designed to be so unstoppable that they may be extinction-level events, I kid you not. This is what AI experts and researchers worry about. People will want to go into survival mode, stockpile food, underground shelters, etc. basically the cadaan doomsday preppers. We are a society that already has that built in, everyday is doomsday for us sadly. We are culturally resilient to that. Somalia and places like it will be the perfect locations, people like us, Arab Bedouins, Tuaregs, etc. Dry, hot environments where disease has a harder time, where there is little infrastructure, small isolated populations. This is why Coronavirus had no impact in Somalia. You get the point, I won’t belabor it. All I am saying is we need vision; we have natural advantages that we don’t think about and we don’t maximize. We will have an opportunity to catch up and even surpass rapidly. We are thinking about the world of today, but not the world of tomorrow. The world of tomorrow will undoubtedly be decentralized. No government will be able to stop that, let alone any in Africa. We are already ahead of the game in that regard. Collapse of government means nothing to us. All of these societies we admire were founded and built on a vision that wasn’t apparent at the beginning. They weren’t thinking about who will be the next president or whether they have oil. We need to see the bigger picture instead of just solutioning. I urge you all to change your mindset and start thinking about alternatives so we are better positioned to take advantage of the world of tomorrow instead of worrying about our stagnant and broken world today. We can escape this vicious cycle of corruption and humiliation but only if we see the future and plan carefully for it. We need to transform or the opportunity will be wasted yet again. One of you will be that visionary leader, I hope. Start thinking in a clear-eyed, sober, and hyper-realistic way, not the old way. Don’t be afraid of change, embrace it. Don’t avoid harsh truths, no matter how bitter. The old way will only ever lead us to slow and agonizing destruction. We all know it intuitively. Have hope in the right things and be excited about our future. This is a call to arms, for you, if you truly care or you just enjoy feeling hopeless. Be the change you want to see, and have a sense of bigger purpose. This is where our future starts.
Post-text: Don’t try to fix everything at once, and don’t think you have to do it alone. Start small, play your part. Help our people use AI to aid in free education back home ( i.e. Somali language ai tutors), develop small business micro-automation for Somali traders with ai, collect data that we can use AI to interpret, train on, and optimize so we have Somali-specific datasets. Research how AI can help us predict and fight droughts, optimize farming techniques, etc. Just anywhere where we can improve. It will add up to something much bigger over time.
Post-text: Don’t try to fix everything at once, and don’t think you have to do it alone. Start small, play your part. Help our people use AI to aid in free education back home ( i.e. Somali language ai tutors), develop small business micro-automation for Somali traders with ai, collect data that we can use AI to interpret, train on, and optimize so we have Somali-specific datasets. Research how AI can help us predict and fight droughts, optimize farming techniques, etc. Just anywhere where we can improve. It will add up to something much bigger over time.
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Like those companies trying to put AI in everything
