DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Data analyst Fabrice Sonzahi enrolled in a course on artificial intelligence (AI) in Dakar, hoping to help struggling farmers improve crop yields in his home country of Ivory Coast. He is part of an inaugural batch of students at a new AI programming school in Senegal, one of the first in West Africa. Its mission is to train local people in using data to solve pressing issues like the impact of climate change on crops. The Dakar Institute of Technology (DIT), which opened in September, is running its first 10-week boot camp with nine students in partnership with French AI school VIVADATA. "I am convinced that by analyzing data we can give (farmers) better solutions," said Sonzahi, 30.

Artificial intelligence promises to make hiring an unbiased utopia. Employee referrals, a process that tends to leave underrepresented groups out, still make up a bulk of companies' hires. Recruiters and hiring managers also bring their own biases to the process, studies have found, often choosing people with the "right-sounding" names and educational background. Across the pipeline, companies lack racial and gender diversity, with the ranks of underrepresented people thinning at the highest levels of the corporate ladder. Fewer than 5 percent of chief executive officers at Fortune 500 companies are women-and there are only three black CEOs.

Anyone who regularly calls for takeout has likely had an order screwed up due to human error. You want two large pizzas, extra pepperoni, light cheese, and instead, your pies arrive light on the pepperoni and heavy on the mozzarella. These situations can be frustrating, not least because of the time involved. If you decide to reject the order, you have to call the company back, then wait for the correct (hopefully) meal to show up. That's the sort of hassle that sometimes leads to people picking the unwanted pickles off their burgers, or deciding that they can live with the General Tso when we wanted the Kung Pao.