Marnie Chesterton

It's me, and I can definitely claim those points, but you're going to have to sort of follow the train of thought because the story I have this week begins in Norway.

Which is not in Africa.

That is true, but we'll get there.

What I wanted to talk about in Norway is how researchers with the Sami AI Lab at UIT, the Arctic University of Norway, are investigating how to build machine learning models that align with Sami views and norms.

Okay, and the Sami being the indigenous peoples of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and parts of Russia?

Yeah, that's correct.

Still not Africa, though.

I mean, you're being very Africa Day about this, Marnie.

This is real, like, I have a map and ruler vibes kind of thing going here.

I have a pointless point.

I have some totally unusable points to give away, and I'm not doing it unless you tie us to the theme.

Well, we're going to get there still.

I'm claiming these points.

So the Sami are leveraging predictive AI models and time series analysis to monitor ice evolution.

They're tracking animal migrations.

They're assessing the environmental impacts of oil and mining activities on Sami lands.

Essentially, they're showing that AI can be used for environmental and climate monitoring by indigenous peoples.

Which is interesting because we've heard a lot about how AI is harmful for the environment.

So it's great to hear that these are tools that can be leveraged for conservation.

Yeah, I'm going to get to the harm, but let's start with the good news at least first here.