Transcription
Did you know that AI image generators default to dark skin for criminals and to light skin for CEOs? That's not an accident. Artificial intelligence isn't neutral. You may think that it's a part of the bigger technology world and that makes it somewhat more reliable or maybe just more scientific. And yet the reality is biases get baked into these programs. Biases get baked into AI and now AI is booming and yet communities like the black community continue to be underserved, underrepresented, and frankly misrepresented because of these baked-in biases. These are serious blind spots, serious deficiencies about culture and community. And when Isosa Osa at Onyx Impact saw the void, saw the need for something new and advanced that could address these things and these problems, she said, "Let's go." And that's exactly what's happened.
I invited her here at Katy Fang News to talk about this incredible new AI chat assistant called Aisha. And let me tell you, it has so many downloads, so many users, and it's only been out for a week. And it is also thoughtful about environmental impacts. It's thoughtful about how we need to ensure that communities of color don't remain marginalized and don't remain underrepresented. Take a listen because I know you'll be excited with this news. I'm so excited to be having this conversation with Isosa OSA, the founder and CEO of Onyx Impact about Aisha, this amazing new AI chat assistant. Isosa, it's so nice to have you here at Katy Fang News.
>> Uh, so wonderful to be here. Really appreciate it.
>> Yeah, listen, before we hit record, I was saying, you know, we're all entitled to complain, which we do, and trust me, I have a gold medal in it. But what's so cool about Aisha is that you saw the need and you did something about it. And I think at a time when a lot of us are struggling to find paths forward, recognizing and identifying the problems, you were like, "Look, here is the solution." So for folks that are tuning in, let them know about Aisha.
>> Absolutely. So, uh, Onyx Impact, that's the, uh, our nonprofit that owns, uh, Aisha. We're a research, media, and technology organization that's dedicated to amplifying black voices and protecting black communities in an era of propaganda. And we have created uh and released research and and tools like the digital green book, the blackout report, our information integrity lab with black news, and uh in this in this quest to to try to fight these information threats targeting um black audiences, right? And and one thing that we saw and we knew was that the the most powerful information tool of our generation was artificial intelligence, was actively being handed to black communities in a way that harmed them, right? Uh and we decided at Onyx Impact that that was unacceptable.
>> Uh and we decided that we were going to be intentional about building an AI chat assistant that was um built for us, right? I use that.AI that will be better for everyone, right? As a result, uh it it is it is built on black history, black news, black progress, right? Uh we prioritize user privacy. We do not take any of your data or conversations. Our engineers can even see your conversations um to train our model. We uh our our data centers are located in Vancouver and Montreal and Toronto. And we chose those cities specifically because they represent the cleanest energy grids in all of North America, right? Um and so uh everything is being done with intention. We really highly recommend y'all download, try Aisha out at Aisha.ai because our our engineers have spent over a year building this local proprietary model um to uh be able to provide uh the communities that AI has has has left behind with with a tool that can work uh that is not trying to take their job but can work for them.
>> Yeah. So I was fascinated because when I was preparing to have this conversation with you and I was reading up, I saw this and I was really, really stunned. I didn't know that ChatGPT recommended the death penalty more often when defendants sounded black. And then the other thing I read was AI image generators default to dark skin for crime and light skin for CEOs. I mean, it's amazing what we take for granted, huh? Because when you see something and you think it's quote technology, I think there is this common misapprehension that technology is supposed to be raceblind, colorblind, gender blind. You think technology is supposed to be this neutral kind of above human fault space. And yet when I was reading that, Isosa, I was like, "Whoa." Like that's that's just wrong. And yet think about how many people use ChatGPT, etc., right, today, uh, even if they don't really understand how this artificial intelligence works, a lot of them, I think, use that and just make an assumption that what gets spit out by that AI generator is true and act.
>> And look, that is absolutely correct. And at Onyx Impact, we are misinformation, disinformation experts, right, at our core. And one of the the biggest pieces of of misinformation that that is told is that AI is neutral, that AI is unbiased. AI is is technology, and and we have always known that technology reflects the values of the folks that built it. It reflects their priorities. It reflects their blind spots and it reflects their assumptions about whose lives, whose history, and whose language um deserve to be centered, right? And and when the people who are are doing that building have never had to account for what happened to our communities in their systems, right? Uh uh the harms that those systems produce uh land tremendously and and and often and always, in this instance, at scale. And so we know that when AI gets built without our communities, we lose access to a tool that could have been one of the most powerful forces for equity, one of the most powerful uh forces for economic mobility in a generation. Um and it doesn't have to be that way, right? Um it doesn't have to be that way. We wanted to show uh folks that this is that uh we could create a tool that could be used um by by by folks across the country, folks across the world, that could do something that could do something better.
>> I think maybe one of the natural questions would be then, is Aisha only supposed to be used by members of the black communities, or is it something that can be used by others?
>> Uh so Aisha can be used by everybody, right? Anybody can go to Aisha.ai and and download Aisha on the app store. There is no there is no race question on the app store, right? Um but more importantly, here is what our research tells us consistently: that when you build technology that works for the people that has always failed, um you build technology that works better for everyone, right? Um more accurate embedded sources works better for everyone, right? Uh deeper cultural context produces sharper answers for every user. Um AI protections that are centering uh children and family uh create uh uh better environments for all families, right? And so we are seeing that that that folks of all um uh stripes, types, and backgrounds, right, are are downloading and using um and using Aisha. And just like the the default to so many of what we uh of the of the chats that we were using before um was was centered in one culture and one identity, right? We have decided to um create something for for those for the folks that have been left behind. And I can tell you, okay, that we have seen, we launched this last week.
>> Um, >> and we're over there over 40,000 people per day.
>> Whoa.
>> Right now using Aisha. It is It is stunning. It is actually stunning how um amazing uh uh the the the adoption has been. It is humbling. Um and we are are are are so proud and and and privileged to be have been able to provide this tool and um advance the the mission of Onyx Impact.
>> Well, yeah. I mean, you should be more than just proud. I mean, you've recognized a need. And like I said at the beginning of this conversation with you, Isosa, a lot of times people know there's something wrong. They're frustrated and they complain, but they don't convert it into some activation that changes it. And that's what you've done. Without getting into the proprietary software or anything to intellectual property for y'all, kind of how does this work though? How do you reduce bias when it comes to being able to have created Aisha?
>> Uh absolutely. So we Aisha operates within defined boundaries uh designed to to reduce uh harm and bias. But when we started Aisha, when we built this this custom trained uh um local model, right, we we we started with um publicly available resources and backgrounds that centered um black black history, that centered people, that centered respect for people.
>> Nice. It was really not these were not revolutionary ideas. Like, what if we just start with something that has a basic level of respect for humans, um for communities, for marginalized communities, right? And so what that creates, actually, what we found is um that instead of, you know, creating an AI model for um commercial purposes and then releasing it and accidentally finding out it's a Nazi or accidentally finding out that that is racist, right? And putting up guardrails essentially to prevent those types of answers from hitting users. What if you create something that is just not that? Right. And
>> Straight out of the gate. Straight out of the gate.
>> Exactly. And and so the guardrails are really there to help further um refine and ensure um that that we are are reducing harm and reducing and and and mitigating uh harmful responses in in every way that we can.
>> Well, it just makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, the this particular administration and and Republicans are on the war path towards whitewashing history. I mean, not only are they okay with the destruction of civil rights and equality, but they also want to literally erase history and make it seem like there were no contributions by black people and no contributions by other minorities. And so when you have the opportunity to use as primary sourcing fully vetted, bias-reduced information, it's kind of a no-brainer. I mean, it kind of is this reassuring type of technology. People kind of look at AI with a jaundiced eye, but if you know, like we just said, that straight out of the gate, it's been vetted for the misinformation and disinformation, and it's coming in a way that is premised on just the equality which has always so been there. It kind of makes sense to actually have not only Aisha, but also to have similarly situated AI chat assistants that are also geared towards it, right?
>> Absolutely. Absolutely. And to be to be clear, um, two things. One, this is, uh, Onyx Impact, right, is no illusions about the harms that that AI can cause and and and may cause, right? We are 100% against AGI, which is this this ridiculous quest by all these large language models to to reproduce the actual human brain, right? That is that is what is is that is the ultimate goal. That is what's costing so much energy, so much time, so what have you. And um we believe that to be an immoral and unethical um goal, point blank, period. And so Aisha was designed to be a digital assistant for users 18 plus. Nothing more, nothing less, right? Uh that's that's that's the first thing. And the second thing is that um Aisha did not come out of nowhere, right? We first introduced her on uh the the digital grain book early last year, which was a tool that we released to help black communities navigate online harm, to help us protect our our our truth, protect our kids, protect our culture. Um and we later, you know, launched an information integrity lab partnering with Black News to help them increase their reach and amplification, right? We later um released the blackout report, right, which documented, to your point, 15,000 harms to black communities um in the just the first eight months of this administration, right, that had been perpetrated behind a DEI disinformation campaign. Um that was fundamentally about gaining illegitimate power and control, right? And this report was so important because as long as they can make you think that this is about corporate classes that suck, right? They can eliminate $70 million in flood protections for black communities.
>> Unbelievable.
>> They can eliminate $30 million in maternal mortality uh research and grants for black women, right? Uh um $10 million in sickle cell research, right? A condition that my little brother suffers from.
>> They called it woke ideology.
>> Right. And when we released the blackout report, Katie, we we said that that it is no coincidence that this level of unprecedented attack on black health, black wealth, black history is unfolding uh just a few months before the the Supreme Court is poised to gut section two of the Voting Rights Act, right? Um they are erasing history in order to seize real illegitimate power um and restrict opportunity for anyone deemed unworthy. And and Onyx Impact with the the release of Aisha is once again saying no um that we don't accept that that uh we won't that black history is American history, that progress is American progress, right? And and and we will not just react to these technologies that are determining our future. We will not just react to these um policies. We will own these technologies that are impacting our future. We will have we will build our own. You don't have to give us a seat at the table, right? We'll build our own chair and our own table. And I love the fact too, I've spent a lot of time on my channel here, Isosa, talking about the, for example, Stratos project in Utah um and its impacts on the community and the environment. I love the idea that Aisha is being um is utilizing Vancouver and other areas, right, that have a incredibly reduced environmental impact and community impact because these data centers that are being used to be able to help run these a this AI, the consumption of energy and the the production of heat and water, it is astounding. And I think a lot of us, including myself, are just getting aware of it, right? I mean, it's been very kind of kept under wraps. And then, frankly, like I said, but for me, getting more aware about the Stratos project, and I did a lot of reporting on it here, I would not have known. But you are also doing this at Onyx Impact. You're making sure that Aisha is being done and run through areas that are very, very conscientious about environmental impacts.
>> Correct. And and and you know that is that is fundamentally because, you know, black communities have been disproportionately harmed by forever, right? And and especially by the the um the building, the uh of of these data centers in our backyards for the purposes of of of greed, right? And we are and it is it is fundamentally not necessary, right? Um and and so even, you know, there is we released Aisha with a small um arm that that uh is a highly bespoke um anthropic model, right, that that that deals with less than at this point 10% of our requests total that goes through through through Aisha. Um but, you know, we've if we've decided that actually no, they don't follow all the values that we need, right? And so we've decided to actively move away even from that little small piece, right? Um and and so Aisha will be uh a 100% on on a a local proprietary u model moving forward, right? And so um this is a uh this is the next step in and the work that Onyx Impact has continued to do to uh amplify black voices, to to protect black communities, and and uh this this this ridiculous era of propaganda that is that is disproportionately affecting our communities. And again, we are seeing 40,000 users per day already um using Aisha and and we are are are grateful to be able to provide something like this in this moment. I am beyond impressed but not totally surprised because Onyx Impact continues to be so thoughtful about inroads for your community and for frankly for all of our communities because it's this level of engagement and and kind of activated progress that we all should be taking a page out of that playbook. So can you let people know, we already heard you can go to Aisha.ai, but if they want to learn more and they also want to learn more about Onyx Impact, can you let people know where they can go?
>> Please, please go uh visit us at OnyxImpact.org. You can see um a bunch of our our previous research, our previous tools, right? Um we also highly recommend that uh the the first thing you do when you download Aisha is just to type in your state, just the name, right? And we will um Aisha will share with you a list of black uh news and um organizations for you to to follow and subscribe to, right, to to make sure that we are are are improving our own information ecosystems. And so on OnyxImpact.org you can follow us across social media at OnyxImpact, right? And then you can also download Aisha at Aisha.ai.
>> Isosa Osa. Thank you so much for taking the time. It's a privilege to be able to talk about Aisha, to be able to talk about Onyx Impact, and I am so excited. I'll be tracking the progress as well. And anytime you want to come back and share what Onyx Impact is up to, please don't hesitate to come back here.
>> Absolutely, we'll do. Thank you so much.
>> Thank you. Thanks. Katie Fang here. We launched the Katie Fang News Channel in partnership with the Midas Touch Network so we could bring you the latest in legal and political news. Straight, no chaser. So, if you're a fellow truthteller, hit that subscribe button and share the word about this channel so we can build a high-information America.