ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Ten languages moved freely through the house Sheriff Issaka grew up in. Then he came to the US and watched the people he loved most be unable to say a word to each other.
In this episode, Elena Petrova sits down with Sheriff Issaka, Founder and Head of Research at the African Languages Lab, who turned that gap into his life's work: building the tools to bring African languages into the technology the rest of us already take for granted.
It starts as one person's story and opens into a bigger question. Who gets to be understood by the systems we are all about to live inside, and who is actually in the room building them? Along the way: what it really costs to be a "low resource" language, why localization decides whether technology helps a community or harms it, why Sheriff calls Africa the world's next market, and his challenge to everyone building AI, look at who is in the room.
Plus Sheriff answers the question we ask every guest: what conversation do more people need to be having right now?
Hosted by Elena Petrova. Connected Conversations is produced by Ad Astra, Inc.
