What does AI know about africans?

Early Lessons from Afristereo: A Cultural Stereotype Evaluation Project

‍Two months ago, YUX launched Afristereo, a project from the YUX Cultural AI Lab, as part of our broader ambition to evaluate how generative AI systems represent (or misrepresent) African identities.Our motivation was simple: as AI continues to shape everything from the content we see online to the loans we get approved, how can we ensure that the cultural, social, and linguistic realities of Africans are accurately and fairly reflected in the datasets and evaluation tools that shape these systems?Most AI models today are benchmarked using datasets that include less than 2% African content.This makes them prone to replicating stereotypes that are either outdated, irrelevant, or directly harmful.Yet, there's been little investment in understanding what kinds of stereotypes exist across African societies,or how to use them constructively to evaluate bias in AI systems.Afristereo was developed to ensure African perspectives are no longer missing from the conversation on AI bias.