“Artificial Intelligence, Infrastructure, and Health Inequities in Southern Africa”

Rebecca Upton has been awarded a Picker Interdisciplinary Science Institute (ISI) micro grant for $2,427 to provide support for her project, “Artificial Intelligence, Infrastructure, and Health Inequities in Southern Africa.” The award from the Picker ISI will support a new interdisciplinary collaboration between global health and computer science examining the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI), infrastructural constraints, and contemporary health inequities in southern Africa. 

Focusing on Pandamatenga, Botswana, a border community designated as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and an emerging site of energy development tied to AI-supporting infrastructure, the project explores how uneven access to electricity shapes participation in AI systems, influences data generation, and contributes to broader patterns of under representation and bias in global datasets.

Funds from this award will support initial collaborative research and field-based inquiry related to AI systems used in public health and environmental monitoring, including electronic health records for anti retroviral therapy and wildlife surveillance technologies. The project builds on an ongoing collaboration with Kelly Van Busum of Butler University, and preliminary findings from the collaboration were recently presented at a symposium on AI in the Global South at Cornell University. The grant will also help lay the groundwork for a larger interdisciplinary, inter-institutional research initiative involving undergraduate student participation.