Education & AI for Africa

FROM THE ARCHIVE

Talk to AI

Published Thursday, 23 July 2026 · 1-minute read

Every day AI amazes me. Every day I'm reminded why I'm all in for AI. In fact, I’ve started paying more attention to negative news about AI, just to hear what the arguments against AI are.

It’s not that I believe there are none. Everything has both positive and negative sides, some more of one than the other. Even water can drown you. Which is interesting, since our bodies are mostly water. The problem is not the water. The problem is where it goes.

And that is exactly the challenge with AI. It becomes a problem when we use it for things we should not use it for. Like believing everything it says. We shouldn’t. Once we realize what AI can and cannot do, we should be ok.

This is why I can confidently say: talk to AI. Because there is almost nothing you discuss with AI that it doesn’t have an idea about. Someone, somewhere, has written about it. You just need to verify what AI tells you, and that’s the easy part.

Last edition we introduced Socrates, our critical thinking assistant. From ideas to claims, plans to role plays. Socrates gets you to the best possible you for the situation. So if there is a particular challenge that irks you, at home or at work, we invite you to talk to Socrates.

Mine was matching no‑name POS payments to the right student for school fees reconciliation. I asked if there was a better way and I got virtual accounts. I’d been told it would take two weeks to a month to set up. But it turns out we already had most of what we needed. We just had to build the rest.

We did. In an afternoon.

Talk to Socrates