The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> Can you hear me?
>> Yes. I can.
>> CLAIRE VAN ZWIETEN: And you can hear me. Perfect.
>> We're here. Great. Thank you for being a little bit late. But you know technical issues. Okay. Hello, we can kick off this. Of your mic you're going to be leading this session.
>> Hello.
>> Great. The floor is yours. You start. And we have also people online. And everything is working.
Okay?
Ready?
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: Good evening. In Riyadh, good morning, good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining to this session. And we are going to have an insightful section between the African governance, Internet society foundation and also the -- group. I have Banase, from Doc, youth. I also have Claire, returned from the Internet Society and I have Ida from also the East Africa region. We're going to talk about AI for multiple inclusion. And before we start, we're going to have more discussion, we have some youth also here that we want to engage them and include them in this section.
Would the opening -- outset of this section we seen so many challenges of Internet access and -- local content across many languages. Also working towards this advancing human rights and inclusion in digital age, AI for modelling, and discuss how Internet can be expanded through greater languages. And inclusion in all aspects of our work.
Through the use of multilingual AI system, we can engage digitally isolated people. In terms of barrier, access to information. In this time we want to improve digitally -- education and making Internet content available to everyone. And this has been a conversation, international society foundation is working on the various Internet governance programmes and prior to also working on that in terms of five languages.
It's been a very (?) Time to work on my speakers here and I will give them one minute for them to introduce themselves. Looking at online, I have Claire here. If you can hear me, just a minute, introduce yourself and I will move to Athanase. The rest is there. Thank you.
>> CLAIRE VAN ZWIETEN: I'll go first. Hi everyone my name is.
>> CLAIRE VAN ZWIETEN: Claire, I am the alumni specialist at the Internet society. I have the wonderful job of working with our alumni, two of which are on the stage today and Ida who is also here. Thank you so much for coming this to session. I'm very excited for this exciting talk about how we can create more Internet access for people who are not speaking the dominant languages of the Internet. Thank you.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: All right. Thank you. Let me move to Athanase.
>> ATHANASE BAHIZIRE: Thank you so much. I'm Athanase Bahizire, Internet society alumni and one of the participators of the panel for youth ambassador on Internet governance. I'm an engineer by profession. And when it comes to the IGF ecosystem, I coordinate the Youth IGF in the DRC. Very happy and looking forward to the discussion. Thank you.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: All right. Thank you. Ida, if Ida is here.
Ida? All right.
So...Ida will join us very soon.
We can start giving the remarks.
I want to start from Athanase. Can you give a brief information about that, how multilingualism is focused on the training you are doing at Pan-Africanism for Internet governance. Then we dive into the next question. Thank you.
>> ATHANASE BAHIZIRE: Thank you so much Jesse. So basically we have been seeing a race of different participation in the Internet governance and other Internet governance related activities. But we realise that there was a lack of meaningful participation from African. When we came to look deeply into it, we realised that many African countries don't speak English and non-English speaking countries, they tend not to be active in.
So we tried to play our part in the solution. And we came up with this initiative of the pan-African ambassadors on youth -- it has five cohorts with five different languages. The target is to trend 1,000 young people per year -- train 1,000 young people for year, in five languages. 200 language -- we are five cohorts, one from the Arabic court, Portuguese code, the Swahili code, English code and the French code. So what is very unique in this programme is that we have introduced some African languages that are only spoken in Africa and some other languages that, you know, not widely spoken. So that we build capacity of the different participants, of the different African youth. So that they understand this takes of the Internet governance and then we guide them through mentorship so they can join these discussions and be able to participate. And also can contribute locally to different ideas in the different countries or region.
So briefly that's what it's about the Pan-African youth ambassadors.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: Thank you Athanase for highlighting that. Claire, I want to move to you. Before the fellowship, the ambassadors of the Internet society would come out as an ambassador, I know they don't just come out like that. There there is training. I've seen -- in terms of losing that kind of barriers. Can you comment on what internet society as a whole is doing in terms of training multilingualism within the world. Thank you.
>> CLAIRE VAN ZWIETEN: Great question. Thank you so much for asking. And Internet society as a global organisation we are committed to making sure that the Internet is for everyone. That really is what we are striving for. And that is our goal. That's how we think.
And the Internet cannot be for every one unless everyone has access to it and can read it.
And of course you cannot read the Internet if you're not speaking the language of what is written.
So at the Internet society we really do our best to include as much interpretation as possible when we communicate with our community. We do so in Spanish, French, Arabic when we can, and we're very committed to making sure that whenever we are speaking with our community, we're speaking with people beyond our community, we are providing them access to be able to understand what we are saying in the language they are most comfortable in so we really try to walk the walk. When it comes to multilingualism in the Internet, by providing as many interpretations options as we can do.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: Thank you. Alexander is also here. But this session is not going to be panel discussion. It's going to be a group discussion as we are here. Before we go to the next discussion, we've seen that there are some AI language tools and AI system that is coming that we are training on large language models. I want to ask in the room so we have the conversation with you before we come back to also -- in terms of language, communication with some of the AI tools like Google, bat, and ChatGPT, which is very common, have you tried communicating with these language models, AI tools with your local language; and how does it look like?
Are you still limited to stop with English because it can provide only the languages in English? Have you tried different languages with AI tools?
If you have that knowledge you can share with us. You mention your name, your country and organisation you are representing.
>> Hello everyone my name is Miriam, from Kenya. I'm ambassador in the Saiag cohort. I use ChatGPT, all the time. For Swahili it's difficult because even the basic greetings I'm supposed to ask you how (non-English language) and the answer is in German. For AI gives you wrong answers and you have to tell it, no, that is a wrong answer and then the next time I ask you how -- (non-English language) so for Swahili it's not really that good/bad, it's doing well. No not for the common. Greetings are different in Kenya and Tanzania, for Swahili it's okay for me.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: Okay. We have a.
>> My name is Draman, from Lahore, Pakistan. We have worked on -- with chargeability of -- you are duh and Panjabi, we do good in Panjabi, it has some issues. We're trying to build a platform for local like daily journals like -- for those people to make their -- (non-English) by speaking their Panjabi language or Panjabi language. That's a bit hard thing for open air right now. That's my take away.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: All right. Aria?
>> Hello everyone. My name is Grace Ngan from Cameroon. Considering the language -- it's a little bit difficult because more than 200 languages. Local languages. So but actually there's a -- there's a young -- a young Cameroonian also working on it. He specialize on common languages with a -- with some majority like Urund. And about a Sy. It's not yet effective but at least with the news you're having with him, it's something that you can help us a lot in terms of communication with our local people.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: All right. Thank you. Athanase -- do we have anyone again? We'll come back to. Let me go to this. The we've seen the aspect of looking at how AI has been shifted among local languages. We have -- you mentioned Paya has five languages, Swahili, Arabic, Portuguese and French. English is common. So that's the general that most AI models have trained on.
I want to ask the same question, we'll go to Claire, then Claire also ex explain from the ISOC side.
Want to understand that in terms of this digital language divide, because we see there's a vast difference from English to the over five languages, how can we ensure that there's an equal AI technology aspect for all speakers in all languages?
>> CLAIRE VAN ZWIETEN: That's a great question. That points to one of the most fundamental challenges we face is having data to train on. So much of the content on the Internet is in English and when AI systems need data to train on, many of the data sources they use are in English. So having ample data sources of other languages will be instrumental to making sure that we're able to use AI for multilingual inclusion on the Internet. I think that until we're able to gather enough data about every other language that we want, we'll be able to use the Internet way more accessibly but the biggest hurdle is really having LLMs be able to be trained on this data. So until we have more access and more content we won't be able to do it.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: Athanase.
>> ATHANASE BAHIZIRE: Thank you so much. Let me give you context, I'm an IT engineer in my profession. Some stuff we don't understand in terms of AI, artificial intelligence, it's the ability of the machine to mimic what's the brain -- human brain can do to test, we can do. And we have is wide type of AI now with LLMs, the language models. And we tend to -- we think that UAE is something that is just coming now but we have been having AI systems from long ago. And they are still developing. And something Claire just mentioned very important, for us to have AI models, we need to have data.
It's just like a human being, for you to start speaking, you need to listen. After listening, okay, you understand, you learn, then you can speak. Then you can deliver. It's the same with AI. It has to learn from the data and then deliver. So there is this -- when it comes to multiple languages, and there is this divide we have that we think many of our languages are not documented. And that of course -- they can only deliver AI systems can only deliver from the data that's good.
There is an issue now we have in different -- our different communities, though. If and when you use -- you publish content in your local language, you feel many people won't see. And so you tend -- you can speak French, you can speak Swahili, you can speak Wolof, but you will go to English because you feel that's where you'll get a wider audience.
But then we create content on English, and that data is going to feed English models and it will generate -- it will help generate AI models in English.
So one of the things I used to tell people is if you want -- if you feel like there is this disparate, the only way we can solve it now as of AI is not that far, it's still -- okay, the hype is still new. And we can document our local perspectives. On the Internet. It's about the data we put on the Internet. So create local content, you can make videos in your local language. You can publish articles in your local language. And that will help feed this models.
One other thing like we often use cases in countries like Rwanda and Africa where they have managed to create a model that's -- they can ask the AI any question related to legislation, and it will give them answers and references. Like this is -- this bill and this law and is under which article.
So what is happening is that they have got all their legislations in their local languages. But they were paper-based. So what they have tried to do is to correct that data. They supported young entrepreneurs actually, young students, young start-ups with hookup and competition and tell them you have to, you know, build a data project where you take this local bills and you digitalize them, first of all. Because that's the first point. You get them online. That's the second point.
And then within the data -- how can I say -- within the data curriculum, within the data line there is -- we first -- you need to have the data. Then there is what they call data cleaning. Some of the terminologies we see, they are not accurate. So they used to review that data, cleaning it to make sure it's accurate and can go to this platform.
And after they've got the data, on Internet, now they can start training the models on that data.
And training, trying in lending we used to say accuracy of your models. So you're going to train your model, but sometimes it won't respond accurately. Most of the time -- even we see sometimes ChatGPT that is really big countries don't accurately.
So what we do is someone was talking about you ask a question and then the AI can't reply, but then you tell it the answer and then next time when you ask it, you respond with a good answer. So that is one of the three types of AI -- I mean motion learning. The first one is you just -- you give the answer, you say this is a tomato, you give a picture of a tomato, and you also tell it this is a tomato.
So when someone has it will say this is a tomato. The other model is you give a picture of a tomato, you don't say anything. And then it will tell you, okay, this is a tomato based on what it has got on Internet.
The other way is you give it a picture of a tomato. It tells you it's an orange. You say no, this is not an orange. This is a tomato. It's going to save the new data. Next time when you ask, to be more accurate. This is the best way of learning. The same as our children, like -- no you tell this is no good. So next time he knows if I go this way, I may fall. It's no good. So next time is going to do it the proper way.
So that's the same thing with AI. And when it comes to multiple languages, it's not the ohm way we can build strong AI models in our languages is by training, it's with the data we have. And so I really encourage us, when -- in your usual life, when you want to do your work, and you feel like you can do it in a not English language, do it. It's important. And we definitely will need at some point this various data.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: Very good. Athanase you made a good point. I will still ask you and come back later. Let me see if you are online. On unmute. With the AI perspective it's also start from the literacy aspect of AI. We can feel that there is a gender disparities within the AI and also the multilingualism. Whereby maybe some -- most females can speak very good and well understand their local languages. But the fact that these tools cannot be connected to their languages so that they can navigate, the use of AI, so it becomes very dividing when we are talking about AI. If Ida is there, maybe you can ask me what do you think that we can do to close agenda disparate when it comes to modelling, when the use of AI. If Ida is not on maybe Claire can talk to that. Because I know Internet society promotes gender equality and that. Thank you.
>> CLAIRE VAN ZWIETEN: I don't think Ida is able to speak so I'll speak on her behalf.
But the Internet society is committed to bridging the divide. And we are committed to making sure that women are -- have access to trainings and they're able to gain all of the opportunities of the Internet the same way. ( And a lot of that has to do with making sure that women have access to training. Women have access to mentorship. There are a lot of studies that show that women who go into technical fields but don't have a mentor are less likely to complete whatever training they're doing and less likely to succeed in that field.
So I think it's one of the issues that kind of piles on each other. We need women in ICT, so they can mentor the younger fellows who are coming in and need a woman to help guide them through that process. Because it is different to be in a male-dominated field like the technical community really is.
And something else I want to mention thaw mentioned before, is that AI is great for the digital divide because it helps bring some people up. But it also very deepens it. Because if you're in an area where your language is not represented on the Internet, largely because you don't have a -- like very good access in your area, you're not going to be able to use the benefits of AI either. So it kind -- it compounds on itself very quickly. Just as the issue of women in ICT does. And women do bring a lot of value and perspective to the field that is very necessary to keep it moving forward. And I look forward to even more organizations beyond just the Internet Society and PIAG, working to bring more women into the field.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: Thank you very much. And PIAG, we also promote gender equality. So we make sure that the selection of people to learn about this new language models and modelling while -- we tried as much as possible to get more people. Athanase mentioned that Rwanda as a country has done a policy AI chat where people can get information on that. Athanase to get back to you and also as an engineer, there's technical stuff I need to ask you so we all learn. I want to go back to my people because it's an engagement we are doing with them.
Do you think that -- what has your country been able to do to develop maybe AI in terms of AI and modeling, as well as content? Has your government or country been able to develop something out that you think maybe the future -- because if I remember on the Arabic side I was hearing that there are some training models that they have been training on data set. But is it for the government? And can someone share insight on their perspective country, then we can come back to discussion to see what can be done. As Claire was mentioned that beyond PIAG and ISOC, we can get that information onboard. If any one has contribution or question, they can get what their government has done.
>> My name is Vladinite pauser of this year of the Internet Society. I would like to share my experience. I'm originally from Russia and we have the local company is big, the big tech company, Yaanig. Probably not only in Russia but beyond the country. And they really work hard on creating the ( competitive system. And but they actually have some problems. Encountering right now. And they said the Internet lacking enough resources on the exotic languages as they call it. And they're really worried that they will not be able to create the sufficient tools for -- like the AI tool that will be based on these languages. And actually they also say that they're running out of Russian resources.
And it applies mostly to the high level resources. Because yes, you can find a lot of information online, but is it like qualitative enough? Can you really use it to build an effective model based on this?
So they doubting this.
And I think this is the question that should be addressed as well. And discussed among us. Like how can we encourage the local communities to produce better quality of the data and how we can empower them just to use AI systems and not be afraid of using it on their language -- on their own like local language. Yeah.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: Thank you very much. Very nice question. Because that was the next question I was coming to. Also delve much in terms of the coach, dialect and other aspect related to AI. And as I'm saying, I greeted AI in Swahili but our response is not as much as expected. So we see the AI languages, because they have been trained in Swahili, their quarter and dialect and modalities within that kind of languages is being changed. And as my fellow (?) Also saying, in terms of losing the quality of data -- because we believe that the communities have a lot of local content they can produce. But what I also see is that we see a lot of disconnecting, disconnection between the rural people and how they can bring that down -- because people are not also connected. They don't have Internet access. They don't have access to nobody. So their content creation in local language is also limited. And we can also look into that.
Can I also have any other perspective in early its of some countries which are doing a work like -- how Rwanda is doing work in terms of policy and the government is supporting AI model or from local content to AI, is it some innovations that they have been able to be brought in. We Move it to the next question for our speakers.
Claire has something to share.
>> CLAIRE VAN ZWIETEN: I am abased in amor dam but I spent most of my life in the United States. The Navajo tribe, a tribe Indigenous to the United States is -- their language is disappearing, new generations are not learning Navajo the way their parents or grandparents did. There has been a push among the young people in the region to make sure their language is protected through AI. They're helping feed learned language models through the documents and text that they have to make sure that people who are learning Navajo in school are able to use ChatGPT in Navajo when they want to ask about their assignments or want to know something about their cultural history they're able to ask it in their native language. Language is so intrinsically connected to culture. When you lose so much of your language, you end up losing your culture in parts as well.
So I give a lot of credit to Navajo Nation and the work of their young folks in making sure that their language is protected as generations go on. And the schools in that neighborhood no longer teach that language. So that is one example of a community around the world that's using AI to make sure their language is not only preserved, but is usable. And has effective use in the coming centuries as it's probably going to happen that their schools no longer teach it.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: All right. Claire. Let me come back to Athanase. You mentioned in software engineering the data that we feed in AI is not that much in terms of multilingualism and also the sources that we get those data, the quality of data.
Even the language model in terms of developing and local content on AI models, do you think that there's an open source of data that has allowed that? We can have that multilingualism in terms of that, in terms of development from your perspective?
>> ATHANASE BAHIZIRE: Thank you so much. Very good question. Actually it's very quick -- you know, with this big AI models we know they are developed in California. So what do you expect someone who is developing this system in California to put pigeon. How? The only way we can innovate is by building our own systems. Many of these basic source schools are open -- open AI, the basis it was open source. There is ( at the Emirates in Dubai is working on day day if I recall. I don't recall the name in Arabic. Basically what they're trying to do is to build a strong -- because at least they've got enough -- enough data in Arabic. But when they try to build a strong AI model that is first based in Arabic, now it's -- it has English. It has some other languages. But it was first based in Arabic. So you see it's promoting their own perspective.
So what I can say, if you want multilingualism, it's all about innovation. We need to build our own systems. And we have many of these resources. Education in the past, it was all about going to big universities and you know, learning all these big opportunities. But now through the Internet, as Claire was saying, the Internet is an enabling tool. And through the Internet we can learn some of these things. Many of the software engineers you will see today they will tell you 90 percent of their skills, they didn't learn it in university. So that is a -- the Internet is enabling us to do wonders. And so I can encourage, if you feel like you're interested in one of these fields, you found rye sources on the Internet. Google them. There are many open source. Even Gemini, the previous Google bot, has ( a level that is open source. That you can take and build on something. We have a Congolese boy who tried to build on Gemini, a certain model that okay -- in our country the traffic can be terrible. So is trying to -- building on Gemini so it doesn't really build the data set by himself. But is building on the open source AI. Take it on our own traffic now and see if he can find solutions to, you know, solve that particular problem. And it can happen...that two or three years he will be able to come up with a strong solution.
So that is one example. Some of the examples of the people are trying to leverage the open source resources.
Another thing I would say is innovation is something, it's -- there is also this culture of loving what you do. I have seen a lady who studied economics in university, went to an MBA, but at some point I was asking her advices in code. She decided to start coding, and now she's very good. She's very good. And at some point learning a new language.
And I'm like, oh, she knows this very well.
It's not like she started curriculum in tech, but she got access to, you know, different resources. And now she's good at it. And she can do great.
So I'm encouraging people, if you feel like you have the interest, you do what you can. And make sure you document your local perspectives. Because that will really help in this inclusion, in this diversification. There is one thing maybe when we talk about multi language, I.D.ing. We call it technically I.D.ing, nonLatin script on the Internet. A quick example. When you get on your email, in books, an email that is starting I don't know let's say in Amharic, it's a name of other script, Amharic, or something. When you see it you will feel like it's a spam. First thing you be like what script is this? You will be like no this is a scam.
But we are talking about multi language. So that this other -- we now have domain names that are in Arabic, in Russian. Like even the Russian TLDs, they have a version that RU, they have a version in Russian. The same in many other countries. In Egypt, they have one in Arabic. We have some other one in Chinese too.
Sometimes when it comes also to multi language, it's also about accommodating scripts that are non-English. And this technically, technically speaking, it's a challenge to developer. So if -- many of the developers, if you don't really increase the budgets to accommodate this, they feel like it's an extra work. So there is this spirit of wanting to go global. You see, I have an egovernance platform I'm developing. And you want to -- people to apply for Visas in Gibiti, you use English or use Latin scripts, but one who is using nonLatin script, this starts from left to right. So you see the email. Instead of let's say Athanase gmail, it will be dot com. G. mail at Athanase. Technically it's possible. They do exist. But then for me as a developer, I need an extra layer of work to accommodate this kind of emails, of addresses on my platform.
So for -- but when I have an ambition to go global, I can see -- I was talking about egovernance. Some people apply for Visa to go to Gibuti, but your platform only accommodates scripts that are in English, and they call the Latin script. Then one who is from Bangladesh and is coming with Bengali script, I will be apply -- as Emily just -- that specific script. How would you apply? You use your system because you can't even log in, because you need to have a different email. So but when you want to go global, you will be accommodating this kind of technology. . You say maybe now we don't have many users who are not from our country, but we expect in the next years, we will be having more people.
So you design your system with this inclusion in mind. That will really help us to get to the level of multi language that we want to be to.
Back to you.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: Thank you, Athanase. Before -- you were saying that AI, and also Claire mentioned, without regulation from the perspective government, I cannot be allowed to work -- of how it's supposed to work in every country in terms of the promotion. Let me come to my people. If anyone have a question so far, then we just wrap up with the last questions and answers to talk about in terms of AI regulation. Then we will just wrap up with our session.
Do we have any question online or in the room or...okay.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, I believe that to improve the language (?) In those addressing different parts of -- of the representation of it, so I --
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: Excuse me, can you mention your name and your -- can you mention your name?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Kenelly cosa from Mozambique. I believe this language to -- I have some points that I grab that could actually help to help this kind of -- all the cultural languages to be involved in this. So I have here by promoting multilingualism, which is encourage the learning and use of multiple language in school and communities. I have here actually in chase language, access which is ensure that the public services provide materials and support, multiple languages.
I have one more here. Which is increase the representation of it. That is to promote diversity in language and representation in the territories, major and academia.
So that's with this point I believe that they can bring the language equity for all of us around the world.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: Do you have any question too? Claire, do you want to say something?
>> CLAIRE VAN ZWIETEN: I just want to share that I really like that point that the audience member posed. Because representation is such a big part of this. And when you have a group of people who are building a model that is supposed to be for the whole world to use, it is still being created in the context of the model builders' culture and language. So when we don't have people building models from their cultural and linguistic perspective, that means they're always going to be adapting to the other side. So as we're talking about us adapting to different addresses such as Amharic and the way they would be reading differently it's important to how long they have been adjusting to us. I want to take a second to highlight that there are many people in the global minority -- or majority who are not able to use the systems the way they would like because it wasn't developed in their context. And that' requires may more representation in academia and the technical field. We have more cultures and more languages involved in creating these kinds of models. Thank you.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: All right. Any question again?
Okay. We have two people there. Okay. So from Athanase and go to Muriel.
>> Thank you so much my name is Abani Sentio, from Ethiopia. -- inspirational for the country like Ethiopia. Because you have more than 18 nation, nationally live together and more than 18 nation, 18 language will be spoken in that area. So my question is that within 18 language, more than 18 language, there is minority speaking language and also the majority speaking a language and responding doubly. So within the context of Internet governance, internet governance, promoting digital equity means I be suring the different opportunity language groups are not to be left behind technological advances. So my question is that, how can AI drive to be tailored to support just particularly for undeserved or minority language speakers?
Thank you.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: Okay. So Claire and at Nace Athanase, I'm going to answer this first. Very good question. For Claire mentioned that Internet Society currently focus on Spanish, Arabic, English. Then make French. So this app, when you take maybe -- let's say central of Africa, we can see we have about five or more countries who speaks French:
. When you come to West Africa, let let me say my country, Ghana, Nigeria, other countries speak English. When you go to north Africa, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, they.
>> SPEAKER: Arabic. Within East Africa, Swahili is dominated, around Kenya, Uganda and stuff. Even in Uganda I have experiences that it's not that kind of basic language on there. ( They also have their own language.
Now it's -- part of East Africa but they also have their own language that they are speaking. Now we are focussing in terms of when we group Arabic, French, Portuguese from Mozambique, Angola, speaking Portuguese is very different. So this app what he is classifying major languages because when you pick Spanish, you can get about 5 or more nationalities that speak Spanish. When we take off French, you can see even in Europe, Africa, other countries it's there. When we take off English it's a very universal language everywhere. But you're working on that. But there are some countries which have different language that they speak apart from English, which is their also national language that most of them are speaking. Which means that we are not considering that as an inclusion because it a minor language.
And most focus okay, getting people who can get about 5 to 10 people who speak this language. Based on that inclusion that we are talking about, are we also going to look out for this minor languages, maybe let's say one country is also ( maybe about 2 million people in the country, or 20 million people are speaking the same language but it's a minor language because no other country is speaking the same thing.
So you want to understand inclusion. So Athanase you can go and then Claire you can also give your thought on what Internet Society is also trying to do.
>> ATHANASE BAHIZIRE: Thank you so much. Very good question actually. I want to give you a perspective here. We have European countries like Soph vein ya, Romania and so on. Or half of population of you know, less than 5 million people. But their languages are on Google, on open AI and everything. And they have a strong foundation in their online presence.
In diverse there are some countries, some languages like the Wolof, which is widely speaking more than one -- more than three African countries we have like Lahausa, is spoken in more than four countries. And with like around 200 million people speaking the language.
But if you're talking about many language in the sense of the population, the population that speak Wolof may be bigger than the population that speak Romania, blah-blah. So the idea here is not only -- it's not really about the language itself, but it's about how you document your own language.
So that word I was saying again, I encourage you to document your languages.
The other thing is after the documentation there is connectivity. At some point Claire talked about it. There is a case in India like ten years ago, there were a similar -- many of the African cuptries. But they got a solution, they have what they call in a tract of connectivity fiber and other alternatives. So the country is interconnected. They have the infrastructure in place.
And we have seen when the infrastructure is there, the connectivity is there, their e-commerce is very high. It's very highly raising.
They are digitally tracing. When you go to platforms, you go to YouTube if you want to cook. Among the ten videos you see, you find one Indian. You go to online platforms that are not the big one. If you want a certain thing. You find one.
So the mobile banking and mobile money is widely used. Why? Because the connectivity was there. And then definitely they will document -- they will do business that we try to do, they have cultural activity, helped by the Internet. Because the connectivity is there.
So I believe connectivity is very important for us to at some point get this -- because this applications are on the top of connectivity. We need to have connectivity. And what is the work of the Internet Society actually trying to empower communities and build community networks. By community, by their own -- when they feel like marginalised they don't have the big eye space, don't find business there. They can build their own access to the internet from their own, and by that,s will be able to deliver all the benefits that come with connectivity. That is one of the things that when you have the connectivity, definitely you document your perspective. And when you document, we have the data and we can build AI models, we can build much more things.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: All right. So Claire, about to close because we have four minutes. Maybe one minute or how -- one and a half you can take this.
We've seen Internet Society as international organisation which we have it in various countries. Looking at collaboration, Internet Society is doing their part. Now can you give us an understanding, because we have the government, industry, academia who do research in terms of asset the. And some country that they did the research to see that -- India we have to chem them first. And when we connect them we can create their content on their local languages or even other languages. Now the other government, industry, academia has a role to play. And we all understand that. We Not do that without innovations and stuff.
What do you think that in terms of collaboration, multilingual, AI development, what can we do?
And you can hear the perspective that all these organizations will stim -- (?) Organisation can done and what the Internet Society is doing to support that. And what do you think others can learn are from that? Thank you very much.
>> CLAIRE VAN ZWIETEN: Thank you. That's a great question. I would like to state that while we only cover those languages, Arabic, Spanish and French and English in our courses, we have over 100 global chapters around the world that are working with our local communities to try to solve their Internet challenges, whether they have access or if there's regulation that is harmful to the Internet, they are able to do all of their work in their local language because of that local component to it.
So while we are official for our trainings, is only those four, we really do in our broader community communicate in a much more broader variance of languages. And of course multilingualism in AI will make the Internet much more accessible to everyone. You can't have AI without the Internet. So we have amazing projects at the Internet Society which aim to connect the unconnected. Woo he know the remaining 2.8 billion are going to the be hardest to connect. Working with amazing partners throughout the world to help connect those communities to the Internet. Help give them training toe they can continue to maintain their Internet. Beyond that we're able to give them the skills to be able to communicate on the Internet in their local language so there is greater representation. It's a process.
And as one organisation, we only do what we can. But we hope that with the power of our chapters, our lovely alumni, like you two, people who are in our courses and our fellowships, and just our greater community are able to help support us in that commission of making sure shoo that all communities are connected to the Internet so they have the ability to use their local content online.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: All right. Thank you. Does anyone have a question (?) We are about to close. We will see the final words. And Athanase your final was one and a half minutes, you can also highlight on what we can do to improve AI development and research in terms of collaboration to advance AI in multilingualism then we just -- okay.
>> ATHANASE BAHIZIRE: Yeah.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Should I present myself again? Is Grace from Cameroon. Okay. As an ambassador for Piag, I have a question. As mentioned about redocument our languages. Can you explain how can we do it like okay from Cameroon, how can I help my fellow -- or how can I help my young people, what should we do it quickly together to document?
>> Thank you so much. Very quickly we've been having in the past libraries or easily what you can do like -- let's say personally. Do you know your grandfather?
Do you know their father and something?
But if you reach out to some of your family, you can be able to gather specific data I brought you lineage or your lineage from I don't know some generations. And you know that's valuable data you can't find anywhere else. So you will be able to generate a certain information that's nobody else can find. And definitely your grandchildren, they'll find it as a resource. You will get it.
So there are other solutions. We have -- we used to have our traditional musics. Most of the time during weddings you see people singing all these musics. But now we are getting to -- we are tending to forget all of them. But if you find you have them, you can take collectioning, I have a collection of old music I'm going to have them and you can upload it on a certain streaming platform. That would be data that would be -- people would be able to leverage on -- and when people be wanting to learn later on, they can build on that one.
So we don't have time. I think if you need some more information from...
>> We have some grants on -- I can tell you there are some -- that are detailization of libraries. So you can take a look and you can -- because you are not alone. There are many people on these. So sometimes the I shall auto you issue is that you don't know what to do or you know what to do but you don't have the funding to do it. So the Internet Society also helps you with this. So just for you to know that there are many people doing the same, trying to do that. And we can support you.
Okay.
>> ATHANASE BAHIZIRE: Thank you. If you want to learn more about PIAG, about the Internet Society or some technical questions we can meet alone after this session and discuss informally because we don't have time now. So my parting remark I would say when we want to build AI and inclusion, multi language in AI, what we need is innovation. And innovation will come by creating our own solutions to our own problem. And trying to solve our own problems, actually,s in using the digital technologies. Some of our countries are experiencing -- I don't know -- flood or some other like volcanos in my country. And so there is a perspective that no one else have experience. So you can also create a solution that no one else have created. That when innovation come into place too. Innovation is very is important. And content creation, that type of (?) Too. We Nee need to document -- the Internet is already there. We need to put on things. So document your -- your expertise. Document -- document your life in a way that, you know,s it can help the coming generation.
Then there is one thing I was saying, we -- this -- there are challenges. But we need to be part of the solution. So there have been challenges when it comes to AI, when it comes to connectivity and all other aspect. So the only thing I can advise is let's try to be part of the solution. To include all languages. Part of the solution to make ethical and inclusive AI solutions.
>> Thank you. Thank you Athanase for that. And Claire, your final words? Then we close.
>> CLAIRE VAN ZWIETEN: My final words are thank you so much for everyone coming to this session. The Internet is for everybody. But not everybody has access. So I think it's important that we have conversations like this on how we can use new and innovative tools to extend the reach of the Internet and extend the accessibility of the Internet.
And I am so thankful to Athanase and Abraham, being here and helping us guide through this conversation. If you would like to hear more about how you can get more involved, I really encourage you to go to Alejandra, who will raise her hand. There she is. And she can tell you more about hour amazing empowerment programmes which will train you to be Internet leaders of tomorrow just like the two brilliant men who are on that podium.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: Thank you, Claire. And thank you people for joining of I have a gift for everyone. So no one should leave. We have a gift for everyone for this session, joining this session. Our time is up. And we thank you for joining. And we thank Alejandra for also supporting this programme. If you have a final word, that is okay. Then we can all leave. And we appreciate you for joining. We are very happy for this conversation. Thank you.
>> ABRAHAM SELBY: Thank you. I want to say thank you to all of you. This is an example of what we want to do at the Internet Society. We just give the tools, knowledge, like a programme from six months or to a year. And that's it. That's where we do. The rest is coming from them. They are the stars. So that's what I'm telling you now. We need you. We are talking about multilingualism. We need people like you to go there to understand if we don't move and we don't act right now, that's -- foundings, we have programmes, support. At the end your language is going to die if you are not supporting it. Think about it. You need to put all the things you have online. Defend your languages and use all the tools you have like AI to be sure that all these language live and they have future for our kids and the future that we have. As I said everything is always depending on us. We are the proverb here. And Internet needs us. Thank you. The greatest speakers we had. Please, round of applause. Thank you. End.
>> JESSE NATHAN KALANGE: We are done. Just have a seat and then I will give you -- yeah. We will have a picture.