Odoch Pido and Donna Pido

Abstract

This article arose from a series o accidental and unrelated events in the preparation and for  conference on AI and ….. at the Technical University of Kenya in November 2024.  The original focus on Visual Culture was diminished by the arrival of Artificial Intelligence as an overwhelming new factor in all academic disciplines.  In addition, the massive retirement of academic staff at all Kenyan public universities has left a lot of curious people asking for more information on AI that no one seems to have.  Our concentration on VisCult and AI have been modified to include the hot topics in the Development Field today.  These are sustainability of any and all development efforts and a general, urgent concern with the development of livelihoods for an ever-growing, perhaps out of control human population. 

Here we try to grapple with the concepts of AI, sustainability, livelihoods and development in general in relation to our professional discipline, Design, focusing on Visual Culture. We approach this complex and dynamic mix of subjects from the perspectives of two very experienced designers, one, an experienced educator/administrator and the other a research Anthropologist.  One is an East African from both Uganda and Kenya and the other a New Yorker of many years’ residence in Kenya . Our conference presentation drew from our lived experience, along with academic learning, reference to associates and existing literature.  

We coauthors bring on board the diverse views of East Africans of many cultural backgrounds plus our own. We write in American with extensive reverence to the languages and concepts of several other cultures, notably Acholi.

If this article has an objective, it must be to make sense of an ever-changing professional and personal environment in which the old goes out while the new grapples for coherence and clarity.  Artificial Intelligence is coming into its own and we humans must learn how to use it constructively and sustainably