The tone was too perfect, the formulations too long, the reasoning too... Western. As an African speaking to another African, as an older brother who played an almost paternal role in his life, I recognize his voice. And this wasn't his voice.
He was using artificial intelligence to talk to me.
Similarly in my professional environment, I began noticing a strange phenomenon. Colleagues usually concise, direct, efficient in their communications, started sending endless emails. Too detailed, too structured, too... generic. The diagnosis is simple: they copy-paste their requests into ChatGPT without specifying "be brief," flooding us all with artificial verbosity.
History Repeats Itself: Futile Debates Facing the Inevitable
History has played this scene for us several times before. With each major technological revolution, the same pattern repeats.
The Printing Press
The Church cried scandal. We would lose control of knowledge, corrupt minds, destroy authority. The printing press kept printing.
Electricity
The fears were real: accidental deaths, fires, upheaval of millennial ways of life. Electricity kept lighting up.
The Automobile
An entire equestrian industry collapsed. Century-old trades disappeared. Entire cities had to reinvent themselves. The automobile kept rolling.
The Internet
Skeptics in the 90s saw it as a gadget for academics and geeks. "E-commerce will never work." The Internet kept connecting.
Each time, passionate ethical debates. Each time, legitimate resistance. Each time, mass adoption continued while we debated.
The rare technologies truly suspended - reproductive human cloning, certain biological weapons, some extreme genetic research - share two characteristics: a quasi-universal moral consensus AND an absence of major economic interest.
Artificial intelligence meets neither of these criteria.
BlackBerry: My Own Illusion of Choice
From 2005 to 2015, I worked at an international development institution. It was the era of the great transition: BlackBerries with their physical keyboards versus new touchscreen smartphones. Debates in the hallways were passionate.
I was firmly in the resistant camp. My BlackBerry was precision incarnate. Typing without looking, feeling the keys under my fingers, that tactile connection with my words. "Never," I told my touchscreen-enthusiast colleagues, "never will I get used to typing on glass. It's unnatural."
My arguments seemed solid: proven efficiency, superior ergonomics, years of habit. I was right on the facts. The physical keyboard was objectively more precise for many of us.
But here's what I learned: it didn't matter who was right.
The entire ecosystem shifted. Developers migrated to iOS and Android. The apps I wanted to use no longer existed for BlackBerry. My carrier stopped offering the models I liked. BlackBerry itself capitulated.
Resisting was no longer a choice. It had become self-sabotage.
The Point of No Return Has Already Been Reached
Let's look at the facts bluntly.
AI is already integrated into critical systems: medical diagnostics, financial analysis, defense systems, educational platforms, transportation infrastructure. Investments are in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Geopolitical competition rages: United States versus China versus Europe. Millions of people use ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney daily.
And meanwhile, we're still debating.
While we discuss ethics, millions generate text with AI every day. While we worry about copyright, millions of images are created by AI. While we fear for jobs, entire companies are restructuring their workforces.
This isn't cynicism. It's realism.
The Train Has Left
The question is no longer "to board or not" but "where to sit on the train."
Why the Lamentations Must Stop
On Ethics
Yes, there are real and serious ethical problems. No, debating indefinitely won't stop adoption. The solution isn't to block, but to regulate intelligently AT THE SAME TIME as development continues, not BEFORE.
On Copyright
Yes, it's profoundly unfair to creators. I'm an electronic music composer myself - my music is on Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud. I viscerally understand what it means to see your work potentially used without compensation. But no, we won't put the genie back in the bottle.
An Emerging Solution
Deezer recently announced it now labels AI-produced music as such. It's a start. Perhaps we need to go further: mixed streaming platforms with differentiated pricing, or exclusively AI platforms with reduced rates. More equitable compensation systems for human artists whose work fed these systems.
The solution isn't to block technology - it's to create new economic models.
On Employment
Yes, jobs will disappear. Entire professions will collapse. It's painful, it's unfair, it's real. But crying won't save them.
The solution: massive training, transition support, creation of new jobs, strengthened social safety nets. Not paralysis by fear.
The Real Divide: Those Who Use Versus Those Who Resist
In every field, without exception, a new line of demarcation is emerging.
Medicine
Doctors with AI: faster diagnoses, invisible patterns detected, optimized treatments. Doctors without AI: accumulated delay, increased errors, lost patients.
Law
Lawyers with AI: research in minutes, better documented arguments. Lawyers without AI: ten times slower, less competitive, more expensive.
Education
Teachers with AI: personalized learning, individual monitoring. Teachers without AI: one method for heterogeneous class.
Creation
Creators with AI: accelerated production, infinite experimentation. Creators without AI: limited by time and resources.
The Brutal Rule
AI won't take your job.
A person using AI will take your job.
The African Urgency: A Potentially Fatal Delay
As an African working in the development sector, I see this question with particular acuity.
The Triple Risk
- If Africa debates while the West and Asia adopt → new historical delay
- If Africans resist on "principle" → economic marginalization
- If we only use Western AI → cultural colonization 2.0
My brother speaking to me with "too Western" formulations via ChatGPT is precisely this risk incarnate. Current AI is primarily trained on Western corpora. It reproduces thought patterns, argumentative structures, cultural references that aren't organically African.
The Historical Opportunity
Africa has already achieved a major "technological leap": we went straight to mobile without decades of landline telephony. We can do the same with AI.
- Develop AI trained on our languages, our corpora, our realities
- Massively train our youth - not just the urban elite
- Create adapted models: rural medical diagnosis, precision agriculture, multilingual education
What We Gain - Without Illusion
Let's be concrete. These aren't futuristic promises. This is already real, today.
Democratized Expertise
Isolated village in Mali with AI medical diagnosis access
Real-Time Translation
Wolof-Mandarin dialogue without human intermediary
Personalized Education
24/7 AI tutor adapted to student's pace
Multiplied Productivity
Days' worth of work accomplished in hours
Facilitated Creation
Rapid production, global distribution
Early Diagnosis
Diseases detected earlier, lives saved
What We Lose - With Lucidity
But let's also be honest about the cost.
The Real Losses
- Authenticity: Filtered, sanitized relationships where we no longer know who's really speaking
- Cognitive Skills: Synthesis, original expression capacities that atrophy
- Jobs: Entire trades disappearing, painful transition for millions
- Cultural Diversity: Homogenization by Western AI, loss of nuances
- Artistic Creation: Artists' work used to train AI without compensation
This is the price. A real, painful, unfair price.
So What To Do? Pragmatism, Not Utopia
It's time to stop debating WHETHER we should adopt AI. It's time to start debating HOW to adopt it intelligently.
At the Individual Level
Use AI Now
Not tomorrow, not "when I have time." Now. Every day of delay is definitive.
Learn to Use It Well
Precise prompts, critical thinking, understand the limitations.
Keep Your Voice
Tool, not identity substitute. Write with your words, correct with AI.
Transparency
Say when you use AI in important contexts. Question of honesty.
At the Professional Level
- Train teams massively - Strategic priority, not nice-to-have
- Integrate into workflows - Real deployment, not eternal pilot project
- Measure gains - Visible productivity, quality, speed
- Reorganize - New roles: prompt engineer, AI curator, quality verifier
At the African Level
Priority Investments
- Local AI: African corpora, African languages (Wolof, Swahili, Amharic, Yoruba…)
- Massive training: Not just elites - high schools, vocational centers, everywhere
- Intelligent regulation: Protect without hindering innovation
- Strategic partnerships: Neither dependence nor isolation
The Price of Inaction
Let's return to BlackBerry for a moment.
Those who resisted touchscreens - where are they today? They eventually adopted, of course. But years late. Years during which they missed the app explosion, mobile social networks, the digital economy. Slowed careers, lost opportunities, accumulated frustrations.
With AI, it's the same scenario - but infinitely faster and more impactful.
Resisting Will Save Nothing
Debating Endlessly Will Change Nothing
Every Day of Delay Is Definitive
The Final Question
The real question was never "AI, for or against?"
And to answer this question, we must first use AI. You can't pilot a plane from the ground. You can't intelligently regulate what you don't understand. You can't preserve your identity against a tool you refuse to master.
AI will remain, just as touchscreens replaced keyboards.
The price? It depends entirely on our speed of adaptation.
Those Who Adopt Now
Will pay the price of learning: mistakes, trial and error, adjustments. But will keep control.
Those Who Resist
Will pay the price of obsolescence: marginalization, dependence endured rather than mastered.
Everyone must choose which price they prefer to pay.
But choosing not to choose is already choosing - the wrong side of history.
