Global development

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Electrocutions, disease and no pay: how workers risk exploitation in Europe’s datacentres

As thousands of datacentres are constructed across Europe, the Guardian and Investigate Europe have uncovered disturbing evidence that some workers building them are exposed to dangerous conditions and living in fear of speaking outSandu* checked his watch. He was winding down the last 15 minutes of his shift at a vast Google datacentre site in

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World Bank says ‘small AI’ could transform developing countries

Bank’s chief knowledge officer says the tech could speed up economic development from centuries to decadesThe World Bank is urging developing countries to kickstart the creation of “small AI” models, which can run on a mobile phone with low connectivity, to reap the full benefits of artificial intelligence.While Silicon Valley big tech firms are focused

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Nuclear war and malicious use of AI threaten end of humanity by 2100, says Lancet assessment

Newly established commission identifies 17 catastrophic threats to human health but says ‘realistic route to act’ on each existsHumans could become extinct by the year 2100 due to malicious use of AI or nuclear conflict, according to a new global risk assessment.They top a list of 17 major threats to human health over the next

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‘Someone else will do it for less’: Refugees in Kenya are powering tech for dwindling pay

Refugee gig workers for tech companies don’t know how much they’ll be paid – if AI hasn’t already taken their jobs In a portable building in Kakuma, a refugee camp near Kenya’s northern border with South Sudan, Grace used ChatGPT to research translations of Christian hymns in languages she doesn’t speak. She didn’t know the

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Bring on the drones: how a technology revolution is being rolled out across Africa’s nature reserves

As graduates of an online training course gather from across the continent, the consensus is overwhelming: computers and saving animals go togetherOn a bitingly cold night in Lapalala Wilderness nature reserve in South Africa’s Limpopo province, Duncan Kanyakera watches as instructor Jacques Viljoen deploys a thermal drone in search of a lone cheetah. Once the

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AI tool will lead to more child refugees being treated as adults, charity warns

‘Racist bias’ overestimating ages in Home Office’s facial-recognition software will lead to solo children being housed with adults, says Human Rights NetworkFlawed and racialised models that underpin the AI-powered age-detection systems to be introduced by the British government will endanger children, rights groups and children’s charities have warned.Urging ministers to reverse plans to introduce facial

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‘Who is going to pay us when we’re replaced by robots?’ The Indian factory workers told to film themselves for AI

When workers had cameras attached to them, they found it funny at first. But novelty soon turned to concernThe first time the factory supervisors handed garment worker Lalita* a head-mounted camera, she burst out laughing. “The way people mount a CCTV camera on a wall, they mounted one on us,” she says.The 32-year-old had been

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It’s no surprise that an AI-faked presidential speech condemning foreign exploitation went viral – the world is suffering from a leadership vacuum

Attributed to the president of Namibia, the speech is still being shared as citizens across Africa and the Caribbean cry out for moral leaders willing to speak uncomfortable truthsFor a moment, the speech attributed to Namibia’s president travelled across the world like a gust of hope. It was fierce. Defiant. Unapologetically sovereign. The speaker denounced

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‘What you see here is a wetland without water’: how the datacentre boom is exacerbating Chile’s mega-drought

The country is positioning itself as Latin America’s next technology hub, but communities are pushing backThe Andes mountains frame what was once a wetland – now a stretch of dry, yellowed grass. Rodrigo Vallejos, a final-year law student, noticed the change five years ago while observing the Quilicura wetland, on the northern outskirts of Santiago.

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Cape Verde bets on tech to reverse postcolonial brain drain

African archipelago hopes startups, digital infrastructure and diaspora investment can transform its economyFor much of its history since its discovery by the Portuguese in the mid-15th century, the Cape Verde archipelago off the coast of west Africa served as a hub of the international slave trade, with Africans forcibly transported to marketplaces before being distributed

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