Kasonde24

  Trump Wants to Call AI “Super Intelligence”, But His UN Speech Opens a Much Bigger Debate The words artificial intelligence have become so familiar that they barely sound strange anymore. AI writes emails, generates music, produces images, translates languages and increasingly performs tasks that once required human experts. But at the United Nations this week, Donald Trump suggested that perhaps the technology has been carrying the wrong name all along. Standing before world leaders at the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York on 22 September 2026, the US president announced that America would begin referring to artificial intelligence as “super intelligence” in government documents. His explanation was strikingly simple. Trump argued that the word “artificial” makes intelligence sound fake . He said the technology is not fake, describing it instead as something “actually amazing”, while adding that it must still be handled carefully. He then declared that...

  The Cave That Became His Tomb: The Terrifying Final Hours of John Edward Jones Imagine crawling into a hole so narrow that you cannot turn your body around. Your chest is pressed against rock, your head is pointing downward, and somewhere behind you are rescuers desperately trying to pull you back to safety. You can hear their voices. You know they are there. You know they are fighting for you. But the harder they pull, the more the cave seems to hold on. Then, for one brief moment, they succeed. You are free. You hear your wife's voice over a radio. You receive medical attention. Food and water reach you. After hours of terror, you begin to believe that you are going home. Then an anchor fails. And you fall back into the darkness. That is the horrifying reality behind the death of 26-year-old John Edward Jones, whose name became permanently connected with Utah's Nutty Putty Cave after a rescue operation that lasted roughly 27 to 28 hours and ultimately ended in ...

  We Will Save the Birds From AI — But Who Will Save Humans From the Bomb? Author: Rodgers Mangwela There is something deeply uncomfortable about the way modern civilisation chooses its battles. We can become furious when an artificial intelligence data centre threatens electricity supplies, consumes water or disrupts birds and wildlife. Musicians can protest when AI-generated songs imitate their voices or compete with human creativity. Environmental campaigners can demand that technology companies disclose their carbon footprint. And these concerns are real. But somewhere else, behind fences, security checkpoints and national flags, factories are producing missiles, drones, artillery systems and other weapons whose intended purpose is not merely to disrupt a bird's habitat or replace a musician. They are designed, ultimately, to destroy targets. The question is not whether AI's environmental and social consequences deserve scrutiny. They do. The more uncomfortable...

  From WhatsApp Voice Notes to Mobile Money: Why Africa Could Be the Next Deepfake Battleground Author: Rodgers Mangwela Imagine receiving a voice note from your son at three in the morning. His voice is unmistakable. He sounds frightened. He says he has been arrested and needs money urgently. There is no time to explain. He tells you to send K500 to a number immediately. You panic. You send the money. Then, hours later, your real son calls. He was never arrested. The voice you heard was generated by artificial intelligence. This scenario may sound like science fiction, but the technology behind it is increasingly accessible. Artificial intelligence can now generate convincing audio, images and video, while cybercriminals are already combining AI with established techniques such as impersonation, phishing and social engineering. For Africa's increasingly mobile-first societies, the implications are particularly significant. The danger is not simply that someone can...

  The Chains We Cannot See: Are African Youth Truly Free? Author: Rodgers Mangwela Freedom is more than a flag A person can walk through a city without chains around their wrists and still spend a lifetime asking permission to live. That is the uncomfortable question at the heart of freedom. The abolition of slavery ended one of humanity's most brutal systems of forced labour, and African countries eventually fought for and achieved political independence. Flags changed. Governments changed. National anthems changed. But freedom did not suddenly become a finished product. For millions of Africans, particularly young people, the meaning of freedom remains complicated. A young Zambian can vote, use a smartphone, start a social-media account, launch a small business and dream of travelling the world. Yet that same person may struggle to find employment, depend on imported goods, consume technology designed elsewhere and compete in a global digital economy where much of th...

  When the President Becomes the Broadcaster: Is Trump TV the Future of Political Communication? Author: Rodgers Mangwela The television screen has always carried a certain authority. A president speaks, a journalist asks questions, an editor checks the facts and an audience watches the finished report. For generations, that chain has been one of the basic structures of political communication. But what happens when the president decides that he no longer needs the chain? That question has moved from theory to reality in the United States, where President Donald Trump has launched “Trump TV: The Essentials Station” , a 24-hour streaming operation on YouTube operated by the White House. The launch came days after his administration barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House access, prompting those organisations to sue and major television networks to suspend participation in the presidential press pool.  The significance is bigger than Trump himself. The experim...

  Japan Has Few Public Bins. Zambia Has Plenty of Rubbish. What Are We Getting Wrong? Author: Rodgers Mangwela The street tells a story Walk through a busy Zambian town after a market day and the evidence of human activity is often impossible to miss. Plastic packaging lies beside drainage channels, discarded bottles gather around trading areas and small pieces of paper become trapped against walls and fences. The rubbish is visible, familiar and, in some places, almost accepted as part of the landscape. Now consider a very different picture from Japan. Japan is widely known for remarkably clean public spaces, yet visitors are often surprised by the scarcity of public rubbish bins. The apparent contradiction is striking: how can streets remain clean when there are relatively few places to throw rubbish away? The answer is more complicated than Japanese people simply being "cleaner". It involves social expectations, education, infrastructure, collection systems, per...