Sennay Ghebreab is a full professor of Socially-Intelligent AI at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), where he also serves as the program director of the Master Information Studies and the founder and scientific director of the Civic AI Lab. His current work focusses on harnessing AI for the betterment of everyday life and society, ensuring it is done fairly and inclusively. His work is rooted in a multigenerational family of African educators and innovators.

AJ. Every intelligent system learns from data, histories and assumptions that are incomplete. Who or what is missing from the picture, and how do you know?

SG. I distinguish between three levels of incompleteness. First, a system may have sufficient data – for example, millions of medical images – but lack the technical capacity to extract meaningful information from it. This requires a technical fix. Second, a system may lack the data needed to represent reality faithfully, for example, language models not exposed to African languages and oral traditions. This requires a social intervention: citizens and communities must question the system, identify who or what is missing, and help fill the gaps. Third, a system may be deliberately designed to acquire, concentrate or maintain political or economic power. A social media platform, for example, may prioritize engagement over wellbeing. This requires more than technical or social interventions; it calls for cross-sectoral collaboration and systemic change.

AJ. Where does an incomplete picture turn into a decision about a person’s life? Your group has worked on Amsterdam’s school allocation algorithm. What did that case show?

SG. Amsterdam’s school allocation algorithm is one of several Civic AI Lab use cases addressing socioeconomic inequality, in this case in education. It matches children to their preferred schools using a well-known algorithm based on Nobel Prize-winning work. Its appeal lies partly in being strategy-proof: parents and children cannot improve their chances by misrepresenting their preferences.

But this assumes that parents and children will try to game the system. Our research found that, when adequately informed about the risks of misreporting, they have little or no reason to do so. This incomplete understanding of their needs and behavior led to a suboptimal algorithm with real consequences: for years, children ended up in schools they did not want to attend. The lesson is that an algorithm can work exactly as designed and still produce undesirable outcomes when its underlying assumptions fail to reflect people’s realities.

AJ. The obvious answer is more data. But archives and museums earn trust by showing provenance, where an object came from and who handled it. Should an AI system have provenance too?

SG. If more data means better, more trustworthy data, then yes. Provenance in AI is essential to understanding where data comes from, how it has been collected and processed, and whose knowledge it represents. But data provenance is about more than improving AI. It is also about recognizing the citizens and communities whose knowledge and data make scientific, technological and social developments possible. Too often, science and society have extracted knowledge without giving proper credit, ownership or agency to those who contributed it.

As AI expands across every sector and around the world, data provenance offers an opportunity to change that: from extraction to recognition, and from exploitation to shared ownership. It can help ensure that the people and communities behind the data are not merely resources for AI, but recognized contributors with a say in how their knowledge is used.

AJ. Your group’s line is that AI should be working for people, instead of people working for AI. What changes in practice when the community is in the room before the system is built?

SG. I believe science and development of any sort – including AI – should follow a cycle of reflection, introspection, imagination and transformation, and then begin again. Citizens and communities should participate in every step of this cycle as equal partners, not passive recipients of systems and markets designed for them or applied to them. This brings different perspectives to the table, challenges assumptions and improves the quality of every step.

Yet involving citizens and communities is generally seen as undesirable because it tends to slow things down. But as a Kenyan proverb goes, “Hurry, hurry has no blessing.” Rushing may save time in the short term but lead to poor outcomes in the long term. If we want AI to work for people, we must take the time to reflect, listen and imagine together before we transform.

AJ. This conversation happens in Johannesburg, at a festival asking who gets to define intelligence. What does an African setting change about what counts as incomplete?

SG. In recent years, I have increasingly drawn on African proverbs to clarify and challenge how AI is designed, developed and deployed. Three other examples I regularly use in my lectures and conversations are the Nigerian proverb, “Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter”; the Ghanaian proverb, “Wisdom is like a baobab tree; no one individual can embrace it”; and an Ethiopian proverb from my birth country, “You cannot wake someone who is pretending to be asleep.”

Only recently did I realize how these proverbs speak to the aforementioned levels of incompleteness. I seem to be increasingly turning to Africa’s deep, timeless and often globally overlooked wisdom to imagine different pathways for AI. By resisting the frantic AI races shaped elsewhere and drawing on its own histories, knowledge systems and communal traditions, Africa can help shift the focus from individual power to collective wisdom, and from competition to compassion for people and planet.

AJ. What is the one question a citizen, a funder or a ministry should ask of any AI system before trusting it?

SG. The central question of my research group Socially Intelligent Artificial Systems (SIAS), including the Civic AI Lab is: How can we develop AI that helps move us from the Cycle of Oppression to the Cycle of Liberation?

These cycles draw on the work of Brazilian educator and thinker Paulo Freire, author of the seminal book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The Cycle of Oppression reproduces a status quo driven by power, profit, competition, greed and fear. The Cycle of Liberation points towards a more conscious society grounded in equity, dignity and compassion.

Too often, AI reinforces oppression rather than enabling liberation. The central question of my research group, challenges citizens, funders, companies and ministries to look beyond technical effectiveness or economic profit. What kind of society does this system help create, and whose interests does it serve? The discomfort this question provokes is important. It may be the beginning of the reflection and introspection needed for genuine transformation.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN INTELLIGENCE LEARNS FROM AN INCOMPLETE PICTURE OF HUMANITY? 15 October 2026, Fak'ugesi Digital & Innovation Festival: fakugesi.co.za

Ashraf Johaardien is the Writer in Residence at the Fak’ugesi African Digital & Innovation Festival 2026. His views are his own and do not represent those of the festival or its partners.

8 October 2026

Dr Tammy Hodgskiss Reynard is the Head of the Origins Centre Museum at Wits University. A proudly South African archaeologist, ochre researcher, museum enthusiast, people hugger and mother, Tammy is passionate about celebrating South Africa’s heritage and sharing it with the world. She loves creating engaging art-science experiences and playing her part in growing an inclusive community.

AJ. Museums were built to decide what gets kept, what gets shown and what gets left out. Who decided at the Origins Centre, and how has that changed since it opened in 2006?

TH. Origins Centre was shaped by many hands: researchers, heritage practitioners, artists and descendant community members. From the start it was meant to be a space for many voices, where storytelling sits alongside science. Since opening in 2006, and now placed within the Wits Science Faculty, that mission has widened, encompassing broader research projects and science communication initiatives. Origins Centre is not just about how we became human, but about what makes us human. The displays and interactions are interdisciplinary, ethical and rooted in community. This means engagement that reaches beyond the museum walls – bridging the academic-public divide – and giving voice to those who were often left out of the history books, misrepresented or who were unethically treated.

AJ. You treat memory as infrastructure. What does a museum hold up, and what falls if it fails?

TH. A museum can be many different things – and the memories and moments it holds are always changing depending on who is viewing them and how we connect with them. Every choice about what goes on display and what stays in storage decides which memories survive or are given value. If a museum fails this, stories narrow, voices are silenced and the past hardens into one version. A museum should always be evolving, as stories change and understandings and perspectives of the past change. At Origins, we try to make engagement with the past personal and interactive through new temporary exhibitions, lectures, workshops and family events.

AJ. The Origins Centre holds 2.6 million-year-old tool technology and early art. Which object most changes how a visitor thinks about who invented what?

TH. It’s difficult to choose one object. But the large, embroidered panels present the viewer with a spellbinding, visual illustration of the complicated and harsh, yet beautiful and hopeful story of southern Africa and its people. Africa is the heart of our human journey. The museum presents the amazing heritage, innovation and diversity that Africa holds – now and in the ancient past. Much of Origins Centre focuses on the first peoples to live here in southern Africa, the San hunter-gatherers. I hope visitors are impacted by their important place in our history (and present), their intimate knowledge of land, plants and animals and how these are all connected cosmologically.

AJ. Your research is on ochre and what it says about early cognition. What does a pinch of ochre tell us that a headline cannot?

TH. I believe everyone needs a little ochre in their life! Ochre and mineral pigments have been used by humans for over 100,000 years, but these, mostly red, mineral pigments were collected for more than 500,000 years in southern Africa, even before anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Although the obvious focus may be on their use as paints, these iron-rich rocks (and soils) can be used in so many ways. Ochre is often used in ritual ceremonies, as a beauty product, to preserve hides, as skin protection, in hafting adhesives, and even as a nutritional supplement. So ochre is not just a pigment, it’s a simple rock that carries a deep human story.

AJ. The centre uses multisensory experiences and AR. What does technology add to a museum, and what can it quietly take away?

TH. The displays, films, contemporary art, interactive experiences and our AR app make Origins a distinctive, multisensory experience. AR can be a valuable way to bring cultural and historical landscapes to life, and it's also fun. But for me, the tactile and hands-on interactions matter most, so holding a stone tool or making ochre paint. But I love how engagement with a giraffe or zebra on the app can ignite the spark for a child to learn more and explore more. Technology speaks more strongly to some people than to others, so offering different levels of engagement matters. What’s important to me is that the connection to real objects and people isn’t lost.

AJ. If you drew the blueprint for the museum of 2050, what would be in it, and what would you leave out?

TH. The ‘Origins of Life’ element is important to include in the story told at Origins Centre. Wits curates an amazing and vast fossil collection, which needs to be made available to the public for viewing and engaging with. Many people don’t realise the long fossil record that (South) Africa has, from the first single celled organisms and fossil plants to dinosaurs and therapsids. Importantly, the museum needs to remain a visual and sensory experience of our past, our connection with nature – which we are sometimes very removed from these days – and to foster ways of remembering, reinventing and growing connections with each other.

FROM THE INSIDE OF A MEMORY ENGINE: THE ORIGINS CENTRE AS A GLAM CASE STUDY: 14 October 2026, Fak'ugesi Digital & Innovation Festival: fakugesi.co.za

Ashraf Johaardien is the Writer in Residence at the Fak’ugesi African Digital & Innovation Festival 2026. His views are his own and do not represent those of the festival or its partners.

9 October 2026