{"id":283646,"date":"2026-06-29T10:22:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T14:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/29\/could-ai-create-a-new-form-of-inequality-in-south-africa\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T11:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T15:30:09","slug":"could-ai-create-a-new-form-of-inequality-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/29\/could-ai-create-a-new-form-of-inequality-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Could AI create a new form of inequality in South Africa?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/could-ai-create-a-new-form-of-inequality-in-south-africa-283725\">Could AI create a new form of inequality in South Africa?<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/could-ai-create-a-new-form-of-inequality-in-south-africa-283725\">https:\/\/theconversation.com\/could-ai-create-a-new-form-of-inequality-in-south-africa-283725<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-06-29 10:22:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"theconversation.com\">theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Generative artificial intelligence (AI), and especially large language models deployed as chatbots and digital assistants, are now part of everyday digital life.<\/p>\n<p>These models are being framed as a helpful assistant, a patient tutor, a customer service agent and even a source of emotional support. But what happens when even more human encounters are mediated by machines?<\/p>\n<p>This question matters especially in South Africa, where apartheid not only separated people by law, but also shaped who was seen, heard and recognised as fully human. Its legacy still lives in unequal access to education, healthcare, work, technology and public services.<\/p>\n<p>This is also why ubuntu has become such an important part of South African debates about social life. Ubuntu is a way of thinking about personhood. It sees personhood as relational. It reminds us that dignity is not only individual. It is also formed through mutual belonging.<\/p>\n<p>Ubuntu is expressed through the idea that \u201ca person is a person through other persons\u201d. People become themselves fully through relationships of recognition, care, responsibility and shared life.<\/p>\n<p>As a scholar of technology and society, I have been exploring how AI is reshaping human relationships.<\/p>\n<p>In my research on ubuntu and generative AI, I set about asking what this means in practice. What happens when machines begin to replace the human relationships through which people experience care, recognition and dignity? To answer this question, I used ubuntu as a lens to examine whether AI-mediated interactions can support the kinds of relationships through which human dignity is affirmed.<\/p>\n<p>I argue that the rise of generative AI is more than a technical issue in two ways. Firstly, it is a relational one. Secondly, it\u2019s about who gets access to human beings. In my paper, I describe this risk as a form of \u201crelational apartheid\u201d. By this I mean a social and technological pattern in which access to meaningful human engagement becomes unequally&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/could-ai-create-a-new-form-of-inequality-in-south-africa-283725\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Could AI create a new form of inequality in South Africa? https:\/\/theconversation.com\/could-ai-create-a-new-form-of-inequality-in-south-africa-283725 Publish Date: 2026-06-29&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":283647,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/739156\/original\/file-20260601-85-sq57y.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&rect=0%2C177%2C2121%2C1060&q=45&auto=format&w=1356&h=668&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20,19],"class_list":["post-283646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-generative-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283646"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283648,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283646\/revisions\/283648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}