By Helina Bezabih
Open AI is a research organization that focuses on developing advanced artificial intelligence technologies and making them accessible to the public. One of the latest developments of Open AI that has caught the public by a storm within the past 4 months are their language models like Chat GPT-3.5 and Chat GPT-4 which generate human-like texts in response to tasks required from it, it can range from giving you news updates to solving math problems or even to writing a code for a given programming task. In order to access most of these services, users are required to create an account, which requires a foreign number.
Furthermore, access to more advanced models require payments and the payment methods available on Open AI are better suited for countries with diverse payment processing options.These factors make accessing the services provided by Open AI undoubtedly more difficult to users situated in Ethiopia.
This is where Sheger AI comes in.
What is Sheger AI?
Sheger AI is an AI hub that makes the AI tools that are provided by Open AI available here in Ethiopia by shaving off the inconveniences and limitations that users may encounter in getting access to the services.Moreover, It’s done in a manner that caters to the specific needs of individuals and different businesses.
Its contribution to the democratization of AI services in the developing world..
The developed world has an inevitable edge when it comes to their ability to access advanced technologies in AI, as they are the ones responsible for their existence in the first place owing to their ability to make hefty investments required for the research and development of AI tools. The involvement of developing countries, such as ours, however is lagging behind.
By providing localized solutions to problems users from Ethiopia would have encountered had they accessed Open AI directly, we can say that Sheger AI definitely contributes to the democratization of AI in developing countries.
On the brains and the brawn behind Sheger AI..
Dagmawi Beyene, a software engineer and IT professional, is the one responsible for coding this web application. His background in building systems and developing applications provided him with the necessary skill set required to integrate Open AI services into a web application which will in turn provide those services to users.His interest in integrating these AI tools stemmed from understanding the value of having AI could have in developing countries like Ethiopia.
He is currently focused on the more technical work behind Sheger AI such as developing the web application by adding new features or fixing errors and bugs.
Summer Media, under Summer PLC., is the brawn behind this operation as they are the ones who carry out the day to day activities of the business, such as drawing up marketing strategies and responding to problems on customer services. In addition, they are also the ones who handle matters related to making payment.
What can you expect to find?
The signing up process is user-friendly, and interested users can check out the services for free as well, though only temporarily since most Open AI services, which is what Sheger AI provides, aren’t free and require fees to use them.
Another issue that has been observed with the GPT models of Open AI, and that may be present here as well, is hallucinations, which occurs when the model generates texts that aren’t true, or that do not make sense in the context of the conversation.
The payment gateways available on Sheger AI do not provide support for inconsistencies that may occur if users have turned on their VPN, as such they are urged to turn it off while doing so.
Furthermore, users who would like a more long term commitment will not be able to subscribe to the services because the payment providers haven’t built the infrastructure necessary to do so.
However, it should be noted that these are temporary issues that will be solved in due time and that the team is currently working to fix these bugs and errors and also appreciates receiving feedback on their services as it aims to improve the satisfaction of users.
Why ‘Sheger AI’ ?
The payment method provided in Sheger AI is its most attractive feature as users can directly make payments on the platform provided for them by Chapa, which upon observation seems to be relatively straight forward.
Furthermore, users do not need to utilize VPN to access the services offered by Sheger AI, providing a significant advantage in the current Ethiopian context where several social media platforms are blocked and necessitate the use of VPN which usually interferes with the operation of certain platforms and applications.
