非洲智慧：大象、草地与Ubuntu的AI启示
非洲大陆的口述传统中，谚语是传承知识与智慧的基石。尼日利亚约鲁巴人有句谚语：“谚语是能载人迅速抵达思想发现之地的骏马。”而我个人最钟爱的一句是：“当大象搏斗时，遭殃的是草。”这句谚语深刻地指导了我理解当今世界的许多现象，尤其是在人工智能飞速发展的当下。
在此隐喻中，“大象”象征着强大的力量，可以是国家、企业或寡头集团；而“草”则代表着被视为可供剥削的资源、荒地或需要援助的对象的人民、地理区域和生态系统。正如我们今日所经历的，大国之间的竞争凸显了这些隐喻性“大象”在争夺资源、思想和创新主导权时的强大力量。在非洲的语境下，我们不仅身处其中，更成为了大象们争夺自然和人力资源以驱动智能时代的关键战场。与此同时，我们的视角和抱负往往淹没在“大象”的喧嚣之中。
但如果我们能超越大象的搏斗，聚焦于脚下的草地，又能发现什么呢？首先，我们可以领悟一个简单却深刻的理念：“我之所以是我，是因为我们之所以为我们”（I am because you are）。这概括了非洲班图族人中涌现的一套价值体系，在东非被称为“Utu”，在南非则称为“Ubuntu”。Utu和Ubuntu向我们灌输了对人性的深刻认知，认为人性是我们相互亏欠的一种品质。
这种理念的意义远不止于人与人之间的关系。Ubuntu同样关乎我们与自然、与精神或宇宙的关系。Ubuntu提醒我们，在发展人工智能等技术时，应当为了全人类及其生态环境的福祉而努力。在非洲各地，我们看到了许多拥抱Ubuntu智慧以指导数据治理、AI产品设计和社区建设的激动人心的案例。我称之为“Ubuntech”。
Original English
Across Africa, proverbs are a cornerstone of the oral tradition through which Indigenous knowledge and wisdom has been passed down from generation to generation. The Yoruba people of Nigeria say that a proverb is the horse that can carry one swiftly to the discovery of ideas. One of my favorite proverbs says, when elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers. And it has guided me in making sense of much in the world today, especially with all the developments in AI. The elephants can symbolize great powers, be they nation states, corporations, broligarchies, while the grass comprises people, geographies and ecologies considered resources to exploit, wastelands or charity cases. Great power competition, as we're living through today, emphasizes the power of the metaphorical elephants in their quest for dominance over resources, ideas and innovations. In the case of Africa, not only are we caught in the middle, but we comprise a key battleground over which elephants are fighting over natural and human resources to power the intelligent age. Meanwhile, our perspectives and ambitions tend to be drowned out by the din of the elephants. But what can we discover when we look past the elephants fighting and zoom in on the grass? Well, for one, we can learn a simple yet profound concept: I am because you are. This sums up a set of value systems that emerged among the Bantu people of Africa, and is known as “utu” in Eastern Africa and “ubuntu” in South Africa. Utu and ubuntu instill in us a profound appreciation of humanity as a quality we owe one another. And it's not just about the relationship between humans. Ubuntu is also about our relationship with nature and the spiritual or cosmic. Ubuntu reminds us we ought to be developing technologies like AI for the benefit of all of humanity and our ecology. Across Africa, we have exciting examples of embracing the wisdom of ubuntu to inform data governance, AI product design and community building. I call it ubuntech. (Laughter)Ubuntu驱动的数据治理与数据正义
将Ubuntu的集体主义和相互依存的价值观应用于AI开发，首先体现在数据治理的理念上。当前的人工智能发展普遍将数据视为一种取之不尽的自然资源，正如“数据是新的石油”这类说法所描绘的那样。然而，这种范式的局限性已开始显现，研究人员正发出警告，训练AI模型所需的高质量数据正日益枯竭。
通过Ubuntu的视角，我们对数据的概念有了不同的理解。我们认识到数据代表着生命、文化和社群。因此，对我们而言，数据治理的核心在于数据的有意义参与、知情同意、自决权以及数据集合的社群所有权，而这些数据集合正是语言、基于自然的知识和本土智慧的来源。这一理念激发了我们非洲政策框架中的数据正义（Data Justice: 一个倡导公平的数据访问、所有权和使用，特别是为边缘化社群服务的框架）概念。
数据正义之所以重要，是因为它确保了例如非洲农村妇女等群体——她们拥有关于农业、食品生产、医药和环境保护的独特知识——在数据系统和农业技术解决方案中得到代表和可见。
Original English
AI development today treats data as if it's an abundant natural resource, and we hear this in sayings like, “data is the new oil.” But already the limits of this paradigm are being realized, as researchers have been sounding the alarm that high-quality data to train AI models is drying up. Through ubuntu, we conceptualize data differently, and we appreciate that it represents lives, cultures and communities, so that data governance for us is about the meaningful participation, informed consent, self-determination and community ownership of data sets from which language, nature-based knowledge and Indigenous wisdom are derived. (Applause) Thank you. And this has inspired a concept like data justice in our African policy frameworks. Data justice matters because it means that women, rural women in Africa, for example, who possess unique knowledge about agriculture, food production, medicine and environmental protection are represented and visible in data systems and agritech solutions.低资源AI与协作式社区建设：Ubuntech的实践
在语言模型领域，当我们被告知我们的语言是“低资源语言”时，我们正在积极地为我们的语言注入资源。传统的AI智慧要求构建大型语言模型（Large Language Model: 基于海量文本训练的AI系统），但非洲的实践者们正努力利用小型语言模型（small language models）来满足需求。
受到效率这一核心价值的驱动，并从我们与自然的关系中汲取灵感，像Lelapa AI这样的倡议已经开发出了轻量级的非洲语言模型，它们在不依赖大量资源的情况下服务于我们的社群。其Inkuba小型语言模型的设计灵感来源于粪金龟，这种昆虫能滚动相当于自身体重250倍的物体——它虽小，却力量强大。Inkuba模型仅在0.4亿参数上进行训练，却在情感分析方面超越了更大的模型，并在多种语言中展现出卓越的一致性。
我们也在构建协作式AI社群。Masakhane（意为“共同建设”）汇集了非洲30多个国家的参与者，旨在加强我们研究中的自然语言处理能力。这种草根组织方法致力于证明，语言的“低资源性”并非数据问题，而是一个社会性问题，通过参与能够得到最佳解决。事实上，Masakhane开发了一种非传统的作者模型，该模型承认并包含所有贡献者在已发表论文中的贡献，无论是贡献了数据、生活经验、编写了软件，还是协调了研究参与。通过这种方式，他们得以发布了超过38种非洲语言的翻译成果。
Original English
Then, when we've been told ours are low-resource languages, we're resourcing our languages. Conventional AI wisdom demands large language models, but African practitioners are making do with little language models. See, driven by efficiency as a core value and inspired by our relation to nature, initiatives like Lelapa AI have developed lightweight African language models that are serving our communities without requiring extensive resources. Their Inkuba small language model has been inspired by the dung beetle, which can roll up to 250 times its body weight. It's small but mighty. Inkuba is trained on 0.4 billion parameters and outperforms larger models in sentiment analysis and displays remarkable consistency across multiple languages. We're also building collaborative AI communities. We have Masakhane, or building together, across over 30 African countries, to strengthen natural language processing in our research. And this grassroots organizing approach has set out to demonstrate that low-resourceness of languages is not a data problem, but a societal one best solved through participation. In fact, Masakhane have developed a non-traditional authorship model that acknowledges and includes all contributors in published papers. Be it that you contributed data, lived experience, coded software or coordinated research participation. And this way, they've been able to publish translation results for over 38 African languages.Ubuntech：主权、祖先智慧与共生力量
这些Ubuntech的实践，是我们为非洲设计、由非洲开发、并最终惠及非洲的AI解决方案开辟一条替代性道路的方式。Ubuntech之所以重要，有诸多原因。首先，它使我们能够超越那些隐喻性“大象”的野心，自主地构想和构建AI的未来，并为全球共享资源做出贡献。其次，它让我们能够传承祖先的本土智慧，使Ubuntech成为由祖先智慧驱动的人工智能。
同时，我们也借此提醒那些“大象”：它们可以随心所欲地搏斗并施展其力量，但如果它们将脚下的草地践踏至无法修复的损害甚至灭绝，它们也终将一同受苦。然而，当它们的力量以与其他生命形式的关联方式被行使时，它们便成为了生态系统的工程师，将其能量导向帮助维持一个健康且有益于所有人的环境。
我们在草原上就能看到这一点。当非洲象利用其力量践踏茂密的灌木和金合欢树时，它们为小型物种的共存创造了空间。当它们在陆地上迁徙时分散种子，它们帮助产生了新的生长，并维持了草原生态系统的生物多样性。因此，在相互关联、和谐共存中，大象的力量是宏伟的，它既是自身、其他野生动物，也是草原生态系统的生命力。
我相信，如果我们能够超越那些隐喻性“大象”的野心来重新构想人类的未来，我们就能实现一个惠及所有人的世界。因此，我恳请各位，务必留意脚下的草地。我们的集体未来，就取决于此。Asanteni（谢谢）。