Which Jobs and Industries will Artificial Intelligence Replace First?

June 10, 2023
By Ilgar Nagiyev

MODERNDIPLOMACY.EU


You could be forgiven for feeling blindsided by the speed at which artificial intelligence has moved from technology of the future, to the here and now. Its rise has been so fast and sudden it’s outpaced even questions on its safety and controlling philosophy, leaving technology pioneers like Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak to call for a six-month pause in its development while these are considered.

As altruistic as this sounds, its unlikely to happen; companies do not give up a competitive edge when they have a significant jump over their rivals. The seriousness with which it is being taken, however, has poured napalm on the fire of what AI can do for us and specifically which industries it will affect first or potentially replace entirely.

First, an important point; no industry or occupation will be devastated overnight. That would require immediate and total acceptance from millions of people across multiple, distinct industries combined with a near unprecedented wave of investment. Artificial intelligence, however, is an earthquake that has already kick-started a tsunami of change. This wave will inevitably surge outward and some at sea level are going to be impacted first.

So where will the tsunami land?

No one can answer that for sure, but there are certain industries that are particularly vulnerable to AI encroachment. One of those, in a case of a machine replacing its creator in microcosm, are those working in IT, computer sciences and software engineering. A large software project can involve dozens, if not hundreds of human developers, each using slightly different code. The overall project, meanwhile, is broken down into separate goals, known as sprints and those sprints into separate tasks, known as tickets. These are overseen by senior developers and the resulting code tested by quality assurance teams to ensure that it works exactly as planned. In theory AI could replace many of those involved.

Next, the success of ChatGPT has proved the viability of large language model AI. This family of artificial intelligence is set to replace a significant number of customer service staff, with chatbots already providing assistance and filtering of calls. An argument against their use, is the lack of empathy a good customer service representative possesses. An argument for, is that they are always professional because that is what they are programmed to be and don’t suffer from staff retention issues. More than that, they will soon be substantially cheaper than a human workforce and that is not something employers are likely to overlook.

Further inland, the next industries replacement will not be imminent, but the cliff on which it sits on will soon face erosion – transportation. Globally there is a well-documented shortfall in trained drivers that coincides with a massive investment in self-driving vehicles. Major players in this field include Tesla, Uber, Ford and Mercedes Benz, but to date, they have faced problems, often publicly, such as the Tesla S that crashed in 2022 while in full self-drive mode. In 2022 alone there were four-hundred cases of autonomous vehicle crashes, all of which affected its perception.

Fusing self-drive technology with a controlling AI has the potential to make it far safer and remove the need for human drivers entirely in areas like haulage and logistics. This will not happen quickly; the public first need to accept and trust the technology. Likewise, significant investment in infrastructure will be required, raising the cost in the short term. In the mid to long term, however, AI can offer spatial perception, anticipation of potential hazards and split-second decision making at levels that far supersede a human and never get tired, sick or hungry. Added to the temptation of a massively reduced wage cost, this is likely to prove irresistible.

And the list goes on.

AI in agriculture can provide predictive analytics in real time, maximising a farms efficiency, potentially alongside day-to-day tasks like planting, harvesting, spraying, livestock monitoring and minimising negative impact on the environment. It will also require fewer human workers. The same applies to manufacturing, where AI is only likely to continue the reduction of human involvement that robotics began.

Another within the long-term path of AI could well be healthcare. More than most this would require significant buy-in from the public, but is it too much to imagine an AI carrying out many of the tasks within an overstretched, expensive and unwieldy medical system? Incrementally we are likely to see AI replace highly skilled professionals in areas like medical imaging and data analysis, all the way through to the real time monitoring of patients. It isn’t science fiction anymore to imagine AI doctors kept up to date instantly with new techniques and emerging science.

The list gets longer every day as the reckoning with AI’s potential continues: journalism, graphic design, law, education and many more could soon find themselves within its path. Where it leads is likely to be equal parts, challenging, threatening, fascinating and enduring.

Ilgar Nagiyev is an Azerbaijani entrepreneur, Chairman of the Board at Azer Maya, leading producer of nutritional yeast in Azerbaijan, and Chairman of the Board of Baku City Residence, a real-estate company. He is an alumnus of both the London School of Economics and Political Sciences and TRIUM Global Executive MBA.

The race to detect AI can be won


As regulation faces growing challenges, detection technology could provide a crucial edge for mitigating the potential risks of generative AI tools.

Synthetic audio technology or "voice clones" pose a serious threat to the public | iStock

BY JAN NICOLA BEYER
JUNE 10, 2023 
Jan Nicola Beyer is the research coordinator of the Digital Democracy unit at Democracy Reporting International.

The debate over the risks of generative artificial intelligence (AI) is currently in full swing.

On the one hand, advocates of the model for generative AI tools praise their potential to drive productivity gains not witnessed since the Industrial Revolution. On the other, there’s a growing chorus raising concerns regarding the potential dangers that these tools pose.

While there have been ample calls for regulating, or even stalling, new AI technology development, however, there’s a whole other dimension that appears to be missing from the debate — detection.

When compared with regulation, investing in technologies that discern between human and machine-generated content — such as DetectGPT and GPTZero for text, and AI Image Detector for visuals — may be seen by some as a substandard solution. As regulation will face insurmountable challenges, however, detection can offer a promising avenue for mitigating AI’s potential risks.

It’s undeniable that generative AI has the potential to enhance creativity and increase productivity. Yet, losing the ability to distinguish between natural and synthetic content could also empower nefarious actors. From simple forms of plagiarism in schools and universities to the breach of electronic security systems and the launch of professional disinformation campaigns, the dangers behind machines writing text, drawing pictures or making videos are manifold.

All these threats call for a response — not only a legal one but a technical one too. Yet, such technical solutions don’t receive the support they should.

Currently, funds allocated to new generative tools vastly outweigh investment in detection. Microsoft alone invested a whopping $10 billion in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. To put that in perspective, the total European expenditure on AI is estimated at approximately $21 billion, and given that detection hasn’t featured strongly in the public debate, only a small fraction of this sum can be assumed to be directed toward this purpose.

But in order to mitigate this imbalance, we can’t simply rely on the industry to step up.

Private businesses are unlikely to match funds allocated for detection with their expenditure on generative AI, as profits from detecting generative output aren’t likely to be anywhere near as lucrative as those for developing new creative tools. And even in cases where lucrative investment opportunities for detection tools exist, specialized products will rarely reach the hands of the public.

Synthetic audio technology is a good example of this. Even though so-called voice clones pose a serious threat to the public — especially when used to impersonate politicians or public figures — private companies prioritize other concerns, such as detection mechanisms aimed at security systems in banks to prevent fraud. And developers of such tech have little interest in sharing their source code, as it would encourage attempts to bypass their security systems.

Meanwhile, lawmakers have so far emphasized the regulation of AI content over research funding for detection. The European Union, for example, has taken up the effort of regulation via the AI Act, a regulatory framework aimed at ensuring the responsible and ethical development and use of AI. Nevertheless, finding the right balance between containing high-risk technology and allowing for innovation is proving challenging.

Additionally, it remains to be seen whether effective regulation can even be achieved.

While ChatGPT may be subject to legal oversight because it was developed by OpenAI — an organization that can be held legally accountable — the same cannot be said for smaller projects creating large-language models (LLMs), which are the algorithms that underpin tools like ChatGPT. Using Meta’s LLaMA model, for example, Stanford University researchers were able to create their own LLM with similar performance to ChatGPT for the cost of only $600. This case demonstrates that other LLMs can be built rather easily and cheaply on already existing models and avoid self-regulation — an attractive option for criminals or disinformation actors. And in such instances, legal accountability may be quite impossible.

Robust detection mechanisms thus present a viable solution to gain an edge in the ever-evolving arms race against generative AI tools.


Already at the forefront of fighting disinformation and having pledged massive investments in AI, this is where the EU should lead in providing research funding. And the good news is that it isn’t even necessary to match the amount of funding dedicated to the development of generative AI tools and the money spent on developing tools that facilitate their detection. As a general rule, detection tools don’t require large amounts of scraped data and don’t have the high training costs associated with recent LLMs.

Nevertheless, as the models underlying generative AI advance, detection technology will need to keep pace as well. Additionally, detection mechanisms may also require the cooperation of domain experts too. When it comes to synthetic audio, for example, it’s necessary for machine learning engineers to collaborate with linguists and other researchers in order for such tools to be effective, and provided research funding should facilitate such collaborations.

COVID-19 showed the world states can drive innovation that can help overcome crises when needed. And governments have a role to play in ensuring the public is protected from potentially harmful AI content — investing in the detection of generative AI output is one way to do this.

RIP

Ted Kaczynski, who planted fear and death as the Unabomber, dies at 81

Living in isolation, he acted on his hatred of technology and science, killing three people and injuring two dozen others


By Paul W. Valentine
Updated June 10, 2023 

Convicted ‘Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski dead at 81
1:28

Ted Kacyznski, who came to be known as the Unabomber, died on June 10

 (Video: Reuters)

For 17 years, he picked his victims with cold deliberation, leaving a grisly trail of nail- and razor-blade-packed pipe bombs across the nation that killed three people and injured 23 others, several of them maimed for life.

He knew none of his victims and struck unpredictably from coast to coast in seemingly random acts from 1978 to 1995, baffling law enforcement officers and gripping the country in a kind of menacing unease — until his capture in early 1996 in the remote mountains of Montana.

There, Ted Kaczynski, the scrawny, bearded anti-technology anarchist popularly known as the Unabomber, surrendered peacefully at the primitive plywood cabin he had called home for 25 years. He was escorted by federal agents through slushy snow down a backwoods road to the main highway and, ultimately, to prison for the rest of his life.

The Harvard-trained mathematics prodigy turned lone serial bomber died June 10 at a federal prison medical facility in Butner, N.C. He was 81. Kristie Breshears, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, said Mr. Kaczynski “was found unresponsive in his cell” and was pronounced dead at 8 a.m.

In December 2021, the Federal Bureau of Prisons announced that Mr. Kaczynski was moved to the North Carolina compound from a supermax prison in Florence, Colo.

In letters and a massive 35,000-word manifesto, Mr. Kaczynski freely acknowledged his acts and called them necessary to save humanity from itself.

“Science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race,” he wrote in the manifesto, tapped out on a battered typewriter in his mountain cabin and then sent to The Washington Post and New York Times with a demand to print it or risk further attacks.

At another point, using the plural “we” and “our” to suggest, falsely, that he had collaborators, he wrote: “To get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we’ve had to kill people.”

Under pressure from federal authorities, The Post and the Times agreed to jointly print the manifesto in a special section of The Post in September 1995. It was an agonizing decision, but as Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. said at the time, “This is not a First Amendment issue. This centers on the role of a newspaper as part of a community.”

The papers consulted with FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno. Both recommended publication in the uncertain hope it would stop the attacks and possibly lead to the Unabomber’s discovery. The decision paid off. There were no more bombings, and Mr. Kaczynski was in custody within seven months, identified by his brother.

Alston Chase, an author and longtime Unabomber researcher, described Mr. Kaczynski’s thinking as having evolved from his days at Harvard in the early 1960s.

For Mr. Kaczynski, Chase wrote in the June 2000 Atlantic magazine, “Technology and science were destroying liberty and nature. The system, of which Harvard was a part, served technology, which in turn required conformism. By advertising, propaganda and other techniques of behavior modification, this system sought to transform men into automatons, to serve the machine.”

In the manifesto and letters, Mr. Kaczynski blamed his parents for raising him in social isolation. His sense of rejection, he said, caused him to spurn authority and develop a belief that modern technology was destroying the natural world and usurping human autonomy.

“Electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid long-distance communications … how could one argue against any of these things?” he asked in the manifesto. “[Yet] all these technical advances taken together have created a world in which the average man’s fate is no longer in his own hands … but in those of politicians, corporate executives and remote, anonymous technicians and bureaucrats whom he as an individual has no power to influence.”

As it turned out, the Unabomber’s targets were not randomly chosen but were specific individuals he associated with technology and the destroyers of nature, including a computer scientist, an advertising executive, an airline president and a timber industry lobbyist.

In some cases, his bombs, concealed in scrupulously crafted wooden boxes, were misdelivered or intercepted innocently by others. Mr. Kaczynski went to great effort to elude detection, erasing identification marks from bomb parts, even avoiding licking postage stamps to prevent DNA matching.

Tracking down the Unabomber led to one of the nation’s longest and most expensive investigations. Then came years of research tracing his habits, propensities and psychological markers. Still, a veil of mystery remained over the ultimate purpose of his acts beyond simple anger at a world that wouldn’t listen to him.

A moody and withdrawn child

Theodore John Kaczynski was born May 22, 1942, in Chicago, where his father helped run the family’s successful sausage-making plant.

Early on, there were signs that Ted was different. Hospitalized in isolation at nine months for severe allergic reactions, the once-alert baby returned home moody and withdrawn, his mother, Wanda, later said.

In 1952, three years after his brother, David, was born, the family moved to Evergreen Park, a conservative, lower-middle-class suburb just south of Chicago, where the Kaczynskis were a family apart.

An image from WBBM-TV Chicago shows a high school yearbook photo of Mr. Kaczynski in 1958. (WBBM-TV Chicago/AFP/Getty Images)

Although he was raised Roman Catholic like most of the neighbors, his parents were atheists, pursued liberal causes and often kept their children inside to read and do homework while other youngsters played outside. They emphasized academic excellence.

Ted, bookish and socially awkward, scored at genius level, between 160 and 170 on IQ tests. He skipped the sixth and 11th grades and was admitted to Harvard on a scholarship at 16.

There, his isolation deepened. He was physically and emotionally younger than his classmates, and a social gulf divided public high school graduates like himself and the dominant private-school crowd on campus. He interacted little with others and took a single room.

He participated in a study — part of the controversial Project MKUltra “mind-control” experiments of the 1950s led by Harvard psychologist Henry A. Murray and backed by the CIA — to measure the effects of extreme stress on student volunteers by subjecting them to unrelenting belittlement and humiliation.

Mr. Kaczynski graduated in 1962 with a degree in mathematics and moved on to the University of Michigan, where in five years he completed a doctorate in mathematics and landed a tenure-track teaching post at the University of California at Berkeley.

But he abruptly quit in 1969 and, two years later, cobbled together the money to buy a small lot near Lincoln, Mont. He built a single-room cabin with no electricity or running water. He tended a vegetable garden and hunted small game. He enriched the garden with compost from his own waste.

He rode a homemade bicycle into Lincoln for supplies and to visit the local library, where he read newspapers. Shelves in his cabin were crammed with books — from 19th-century classics to obscure tomes of political science. He seldom worked for pay and relied on small sums from his family for minimal needs and occasional travel.

In the cabin, he also started planning his serial terrorist attacks, the first of which involved a crude, low-impact device that went off in May 1978 at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and injured a campus security guard.

A second bomb went off at Northwestern in May 1979, leaving a student with minor cuts and burns. But a third, which exploded in November 1979 in the hold of an American Airlines flight from Chicago to Washington, D.C., forced the plane to make an emergency landing. Twelve passengers were treated for smoke inhalation.

The FBI ramped up its investigation, noting similarities in the components of the three bombs. The bureau formed a special task force called UNABOM, so named because the early targets were a university and an airline. The media dubbed the unknown suspect the “Unabomber.”

Over the next 15 years, he unleashed 13 more bombs, killing three people and injuring nine — including the president of United Airlines, three professors and a geneticist — with increasingly sophisticated wiring, detonators and explosive materials. He also began leaving a unique signature, the letters “FC” imprinted on bomb parts found by investigators at blast scenes.

A six-year lull in the bombings occurred after a witness spotted a man in a hooded jacket and aviator glasses leaving a suspicious package outside a computer store in Salt Lake City in February 1987.

Personal property that once belonged to Mr. Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, are displayed for an online auction with proceeds to benefit victims' families in 2011. (David Goldman/AP)

When the package exploded, severely injuring the store owner, authorities circulated a flier nationwide depicting the suspect. Investigators speculated that the move spooked the Unabomber, causing him to lie low before resuming activities in 1993.

In September 1995, he sent his manifesto, titled “Industrial Society and Its Future,” to The Post and the Times. He also disclosed that “FC” stood for Freedom Club, suggesting vaguely that it was an anarchist group helping him.

Industrial Society and Its Future

University of California, Davis

https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu › classes › materials

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The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who ...

58 pages

The rambling prose seemed eerily familiar to David Kaczynski, a social worker at an Albany, N.Y., shelter for runaway youths. He began to suspect, reluctantly, that his brother was the Unabomber. Pushed by his wife, Linda, through “thick layers of dread and denial,” he saw similarities between the manifesto and some of Mr. Kaczynski’s earlier writings, according to David’s 2016 memoir, “Every Last Tie.”

David took his suspicions to the FBI, and analysts quickly spotted close parallels in phraseology, even misspellings. Directed by David, agents massed at the cabin in the Montana woods on April 3, 1996, and took Mr. Kaczynski into custody. Inside the cabin, they found a cache of bombmaking components. David received the FBI’s $1 million reward and said he would use it to aid families who suffered because of his brother’s actions.

The investigation and prosecution of Mr. Kaczynski was supervised by Merrick Garland, now the attorney general.

On Jan. 22, 1998, after extensive legal jockeying to avoid both the death penalty and an insanity defense, Mr. Kaczynski pleaded guilty and acknowledged all 16 bombings and the deaths and injuries they caused. Unrepentant, he was sentenced to four consecutive life terms plus 30 years by U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. in Sacramento.

Information on survivors was not immediately available.

Wanda Kaczynski, pondering the fate of her son, wondered in her later years how his life could have been different. “What could I have done to keep him out of the wilderness?” she asked in an interview with The Post in June 1996. “What could I have done to give him a happier life? … I just don’t know.”

RIP

Ama Ata Aidoo, Ghanaian writer who was voice of African women, dies at 81

Ms. Aidoo’s works explored the ghosts of the past such as colonialism and slavery


By Brian Murphy
June 9, 2023 

Ama Ata Aidoo at the Ake Arts and Book festival in Abeokuta, Nigeria, on Nov. 17, 2017. (Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images)

Ama Ata Aidoo, a Ghanaian playwright and author who became one of Africa’s leading literary voices, exploring West African society through the eyes of women and the ghosts of the past such as colonial rule and slavery, died May 31 at 81.

A family statement announced the death but offered no additional details.

Ms. Aidoo’s career included stints in academia in the United States and political life at home as Ghana’s secretary for education in the early 1980s. The experiences helped shape some of the characters and struggles over more than a dozen novels, plays, short stories and volumes of poetry. Yet she said her work, at its core, was an extension of the oral storytelling traditions used by African women to pass down lore and collective wisdom.

“African women were feminists long before feminism,” Ms. Aidoo said.

She worked like a cultural anthropologist, sifting through layers of history — often rife with oppression and exploitation — in Ghana and other parts of West Africa. Nearly all her central figures were women trying to change their lives but facing challenges imposed by men or cultural forces bigger than themselves.

In Ms. Aidoo’s first play, “The Dilemma of a Ghost” (1964), a Ghanaian student returns home with his American wife, a Black woman who grapples with a new way of life, the historical weight of the slave trade and her ancestry, and the confusion of the post-colonial era.

“Changes: A Love Story,” a 1991 novel that won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best book from Africa, was about a woman who divorces after suffering “marital rape” and then unhappily becomes one of the wives of a Muslim businessman.

In her 1977 semi-autobiographical novel, “Our Sister Killjoy,” Ms. Aidoo took aim at Western values through the racism and alienation felt by a Ghanaian student in Britain and Germany. Ms. Aidoo called Bavaria the “heart of darkness,” repurposing the title of Joseph Conrad’s novel set in Africa.

“Since we met you people 500 years ago, now look at us,” she said in a 1987 interview while discussing Europe’s heavy hand in Africa. “We’ve given everything, you are still taking. I mean where will the whole Western world be without us Africans? Our cocoa, timber, gold, diamond, platinum.”

“Everything you have is us,” she added. “I am not saying it. It’s a fact. And in return for all these, what have we got? Nothing.” (Part of her comments were used in a 2020 song, “Monsters You Made,” by Nigerian performer Burna Boy.)

Ms. Aidoo was widely described as one of Africa’s most prominent feminists. She tried to clarify her goals. Feminism, she said, was an “ideology, like socialism or pan-Africanism” that she supported but thought was too general. Ms. Aidoo saw her mission as trying to change the narrative around African women.

She took offense at what she called Western stereotypes of the “downtrodden wretch” in Africa — women seen as incapable of taking control of their own lives and futures.

“When people ask me rather bluntly every now and then whether I am a feminist, I not only answer yes, but I go on to insist that every woman and every man should be a feminist,” Ms. Aidoo said at an African women’s conference in 1998, “especially if they believe that Africans should take charge of African land, African wealth, African lives, and the burden of African development.”

A defining moment for her came when she was 15. A teacher asked her what type of career she envisioned. “Without knowing why or even how, I replied that I wanted to be a poet,” she recalled.

Four years later, she won a short story contest and was dazzled by seeing her name in print. She bought herself a new pair of shoes with the prize money.

“I had articulated a dream … it was a major affirmation for me as a writer,” she later wrote.

‘Long line of fighters’

Ama Ata Aidoo was born on March 23, 1942, in Abeadzi Kyiakor in a central region of what was known in the West as the Gold Coast, the region’s colonial name. Her twin brother was named Kwame Ata.

Their father was a local chief of the Fante people and was a strong supporter of education, building the village’s first schoolhouse. She called herself part of “a long line of fighters,” often citing her grandfather’s imprisonment and torture by British colonial authorities.

Ms. Aidoo, who for a time in her youth went by the first name Christina, received a degree in English from the University of Ghana in 1964, seven years after Ghana’s independence. Ms. Aidoo was awarded a two-year creative writing fellowship at Stanford University, then returned to Ghana in 1970 to begin a 12-year tenure as a lecturer at the University of Cape Coast.

Her second play, “Anowa,” which debuted in 1970, tackled questions of Africa’s indigenous slave trade in the 19th century through the life of an African woman whose husband becomes an enslaver. The couple’s lives end in tragedy.

After a coup in Ghana in late 1981 by a military officer, Jerry Rawlings, the new government lavished attention on the arts. Ms. Aidoo took the position of education secretary in January 1982, saying she thought “direct access to state power” would give her opportunities to grow education options, particularly for girls. Frustrated by the slow pace of reforms, she wrote her resignation letter after 18 months in the post.

She left for Zimbabwe in 1983, working on curriculum programs for the country’s education ministry. While in the capital, Harare, she wrote a collection of poems, “Someone talking to sometime” (1985), and a children’s book, “The Eagle and the Chickens and Other Stories” in 1986.

She was a writer-in-residence at the University of Richmond in 1989 and was a visiting professor in the Africana studies department at Brown University from 2003 to 2010. In 2000, she founded the Mbaasem Foundation in Ghana to support African women writers.

“I have always felt uncomfortable living abroad: racism, the cold, the weather, the food, the people,” she said in a 2003 interview published by the University of Alicante in Spain. “I also felt some kind of patriotic sense of guilt. Something like, Oh, my dear! Look at all the problems we have at home. What am I doing here?”

Survivors include a daughter. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.

In 2014, Ms. Aidoo was asked on BBC’s “HARDtalk” program whether she constructs her women characters as a form of literary activism.

“People sometimes question me, for instance, ‘Why are your women so strong?’” she said. “And I say, ‘That is the only woman I know.’”

By Brian Murphy

Brian Murphy joined The Washington Post after more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief for the Associated Press in Europe and the Middle East. Murphy has reported from more than 50 countries and has written four books. Twitter

 SEE   https://archive.org/details/AMAATAAIDOO/page/n3/mode/2up

Our Sister Killjoy

andalusuniv.net

http://andalusuniv.net › magazine › 8.pdf

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in Ama Ata Aidoo‟s Our Sister Killjoy” (2010), the novel is read as a reversal of the colonial travel narrative presenting the continued asymmetrical power ...

28 pages

The Politics of Exile: Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy

January 1991

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature 15(1)

DOI:10.4148/2334-4415.1271

LicenseCC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Authors:

Gay Wilentz

Abstract

Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy or Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint is a relentless attack on the notions of exile as relief from the societal constraints of national development and freedom to live in a cultural environment conducive to creativity. In this personalized prose/poem, Aidoo questions certain prescribed theories of exile (including the reasons for exile)—particularly among African men. The novel exposes a rarely heard viewpoint in literature in English—that of the African woman exile. Aidoo's protagonist Sissie, as the "eye" of her people, is a sojourner in the "civilized" world of the colonizers. In this article, I examine Aidoo's challenge to prevailing theories of exile, her questioning of the supposed superiority of European culture for the colonial subject, and her exposé of the politics of exile for African self-exile. Through a combination of prose, poetry, oral voicing and letter writing, Aidoo's Sissie reports back to her home community what she sees in the land of the colonizers and confronts those exiles who have forgotten their duty to their native land.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271109237_The_Politics_of_Exile_Ama_Ata_Aidoo's_Our_Sister_Killjoy

DEFINING THE GHANAIAN FEMINIST NOVEL: A STUDY OF AMA ATA AIDOO’S "OUR SISTER KILLJOY" AND "CHANGES" AND AMMA DARKO’S "BEYOND THE HORIZON" AND "NOT WITHOUT FLOWERS".

Araba Osei-Tutu

2010, Asare-Kumi, Araba Ayiaba (2010). Defining the Ghanaian Feminist Novel: A Study of Ama Ata Aidoo's "Our Siter Killjoy" and "Changes" and Amma Darko's "Beyond the Horizon" and "Not Without Flowers". University of Ghana Legon, Accra, Ghana

https://www.academia.edu/38227175/DEFINING_THE_GHANAIAN_FEMINIST_NOVEL_A_STUDY_OF_AMA_ATA_AIDOO_S_OUR_SISTER_KILLJOY_AND_CHANGES_AND_AMMA_DARKO_S_BEYOND_THE_HORIZON_AND_NOT_WITHOUT_FLOWERS_

Ama Ata Aidoo - Our Sister Killjoy PDF - Our Sister Killjoy PDF

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Corporeal imperialism: Textual anti-masturbation in the eighteenth century – and – National negotiation: Toward feminist postnationalism in theory and practice

Resource type

Thesis

Thesis type

(Essays) M.A.

Date created

2006

Authors/Contributors

Author: Allen, Leah Claire

Abstract

Essay 1: This essay discusses textual anti-masturbation in the eighteenth century in order to introduce the concept of corporeal imperialism and argue that the history of anti-masturbation prefigures the history of bodily colonialism. Conducting a close reading of Onania; Or, the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution and Samuel Tissot’s Onanism: Or, a Treatise on the Disorders Produced by Masturbation, this essay illustrates the ways in which the authors link acceptable sexuality to acceptable expressions of citizenship. Essay 2: Arguing that nation is the single most important concept in feminist responses to historical and neo-colonialism, this essay reviews the history of feminist nationalisms through their responses to literal and metaphoric uses of the nation. Using Ama Ata Aidoo’s prose poem Our Sister Killjoy as both an example of necessary nationalism and postnationalism in literature, this essay explores postcolonial nationalism and anti-nationalism while arguing for a theoretical and practical ethic of postnationalism.

Ama Ata Aidoo's 'black-eyed squint' and the 'voyage in' ...

Academic Journals

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In Our Sister Killjoy, Aidoo is concerned mostly with the estrangement of the African educated class. Sissy, the main character, is offered a grant to receive a ...

An Interview with Ama Ata Aidoo - RUA

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MF: In your short story “Our Sister Killjoy” you deal in passing with lesbianism when you write: “Marija's [German married woman] cold fingers on her [Sissie's] ...

Representation of Women in Ama Ata Aidoo's Selected ...

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especially of Ghana. These three literary works are: Anowa (1970), Our Sister. Killjoy or Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint (1977) and Changes: A Love.

Ama Ata Aidoo's Literary Quest

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I read Our Sister Killjoy or Reflections from a Black-eyedSquint as the turning point in Aidoo's African (auto)biography. This unclassifiable text.

Colombian government establishes 6-month ceasefire with largest remaining guerrilla group

Ceasefire with National Liberation Army to be phased in over time

Colombia’s government and its largest remaining guerrilla group agreed Friday to a six-month cease-fire at talks in Cuba, in the latest attempt to resolve a conflict dating back to the 1960s.

The government and the National Liberation Army, or ELN, announced the accord at a ceremony in Havana attended by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, top guerrilla commander Antonio García and Cuban officials. The cease-fire takes effect in phases, goes fully into effect in August and then lasts for six months.

"This effort to look for peace is a beacon of hope that conflicts can be resolved politically and diplomatically," top rebel negotiator Pablo Beltrán said at the ceremony.

The talks originally were scheduled to conclude with an official ceremony on Thursday, but were postponed as the parties asked for additional time to work on final details. Petro traveled to the island for the ceremony, saying it could herald an "era of peace" in Colombia.

The accord reached Friday also calls for the formation of a broadly representative national committee by late July to discuss a lasting peace.

"You have here proposed a bilateral agreement, and I agree with that, but Colombian society has to be able debate it, and to participate," Petro said during the ceremony.

García, the rebel commander, said his group was "very confident" in the accord, though he characterized it as "procedural" and not yet the "substantial" kind needed "for Colombia to change."

The Colombian government has agreed to a six-month ceasefire with the National Liberation Army, its largest remaining guerrilla group. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Negotiations between the sides had resumed in August, after being terminated in 2019 when the rebels set off a car bomb at a police academy in Bogotá, killing 21 people.

Following that incident, the government of then-President Iván Duque (2018-2022) issued arrest warrants for ELN leaders in Cuba for the peace negotiations. But Cuba refused to extradite them, arguing that doing so would compromise its status as a neutral nation in the conflict and break with diplomatic protocols.

Talks relaunched in November shortly after Petro was elected as Colombia’s first leftist president.

Petro has pushed for what he calls a "total peace" that would demobilize all of the country’s remaining rebel groups as well as its drug trafficking gangs. He has questioned whether senior ELN leaders have full control of a younger generation of commanders who he has suggested are focused more on the illegal drug trade than on political goals.

The ELN was founded in the 1960s by union leaders, students and priests inspired by the Cuban revolution. It is Colombia’s largest remaining rebel group and has been notoriously difficult for previous Colombian governments to negotiate with.

In 2016, Colombia’s government signed a peace deal with the larger FARC group that ended five decades of conflict in which an estimated 260,000 people were killed.

But violence has continued to affect rural pockets of the country where the ELN has been active, along with FARC holdout groups and drug trafficking gangs. Colombian authorities have accused the ELN of involvement in the drug trafficking, but the group’s top leaders have denied that.

Colombian government, ELN rebels sign ceasefire: what you need to know

Deal will take effect Aug. 3, last 180 days

Laura Gamba Fadul |10.06.2023 - 


BOGOTA, Colombia

The third round of peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group ended Friday with an agreement on a cease-fire, the main point on the agenda in talks in Havana.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro and ELN top commander Antonio Garcia signed the agreement after several failed attempts to reach an agreement.

When will it take effect?

On July 6, offensive operations will cease following a preparatory process that will take place from June 9 to July 5. The official national cease-fire will take effect Aug. 3 and last six months.

How far along and how far to go?

The parties have completed three rounds of talks since January. The talks began in Caracas, Venezuela with the second round in Mexico City. The third round in Havana began May 2. The next round will be in September in Venezuela.

The peace process has suffered various setbacks, including Petro´s announcement Dec. 31 of a six-month cease-fire with the ELN and other armed groups -- a claim that was denied by the guerrilla group.

Who will monitor the process?

The agreement will be closely monitored and verified by the UN, Catholic Church, guarantor countries and civil society delegates.

What does agreement include?

Although the deal suspends hostilities between military forces and the ELN, it does not halt criminal actions by the guerrillas such as extortion and kidnapping.

ELN chief negotiator Pablo Beltran said Friday that the guerrillas' "finance operations" will be maintained "for now" and for kidnappings, or “retentions” as they are called by the ELN, "if they are not necessary, they will not happen."

The government has not commented on that issue, which has generated controversy among leaders in Colombia's regions, who said excluding those behaviors from the agreement will increase criminal activity.

Petro said he plans to end the decades-long war with the ELN in May 2025.

Dutch court says Crimean priceless objects will go back to Ukraine

Ukraine, museums in Crimea laid claim to objects since annexation of Crimea in 2014

Burak Bir |10.06.2023 - 

A view from Nakhimov Square as daily life continues in 

Sevastopol, Crimea on March 19, 2023.

LONDON

The Netherlands' highest court ended a nearly decade-long dispute Friday on priceless objects from Crimea by ruling the collection must be handed over to Ukraine.

The Supreme Court of the Netherlands ruled the Amsterdam Court of Appeal correctly applied the law in the case involving the disputed objects from Crimea.

The objects must be handed to Ukraine as determined by the Court of Appeal on Oct. 26, 2021, said the Court, ending a nearly 10-year legal battle about the priceless collection.

The ruling means the artifacts, as "part of the Ukrainian cultural heritage" will be returned to Ukraine, not Crimea which was annexed by Russia in 2014.

The Allard Pierson Museum, which has ensured the safe storage of the objects since 2014 as Ukraine and museums in Crimea laid claim to the objects, said it can now "act in accordance with the ruling."

The Court of Amsterdam ruled in December 2016, that Allard Pierson Museum must hand over the objects to Ukraine. The Crimean museums appealed the ruling.

In its interim judgment, the Court of Appeal ruled that the Allard Pierson Museum had acted lawfully by having the objects in question stored in 2014 pending a final judgment in the legal proceedings. According to the court, Allard Pierson “could not reasonably assess which of the candidates was the due creditor.”

In its final judgment on Oct. 26, 2021, the Amsterdam Court of Appeal ruled that the objects from Crimea, which have been carefully preserved in the Netherlands since 2014, should be handed to Ukraine.