Among the most important questions to ask of a new technology are these: who controls it? And who does it serve? With many leading AI applications, the answer to both is simple – the richest. But that’s not inevitable, and so I enjoyed hearing about Ashden Award winner Frontier Markets.
Frontier Markets is a social commerce platform designed to connect businesses with customers in rural India, through a network of women entrepreneurs that they call Sahelis. These women run shops or small businesses, and are equipped with a phone and sales system to connect farming families with a wide range of goods and services that they didn’t have access to before – from small scale solar to farming supplies, household appliances to insurance.
As the founder says, it’s “the first ever AI-enabled technology platform which was designed with, for and by rural women.” It’s a nice example of technology in service to those at the margins, and that understands the human role in the system. It doesn’t matter how good the tech is, it’s useless without the women in the villages and the relationship of trust that they have with their neighbours.
Ashden’s video puts them at the centre of the story too, and the award should help to boost their profile as Frontier Markets seeks to reach more of India’s 800 million citizens in rural villages.
The Earthbound Report 
As long as data centers respect local environmental laws, it’s wonderful that they can support ideas like this. But living in the data center capital of the world, where we have a severe drought that’s the worst in many years, and where the data companies have bought their way out of water and energy use regulations, am still waiting for people to learn that all data has a cost. My blog is hosted by Viridio which powers itself with its own solar panels. I hope we all try to reduce our digital footprint while we support those rare examples of worker and person-friendly data processing tools.