The Student Assembly voted to establish a Technology Committee during Thursday’s meeting, setting the stage for undergraduate involvement in University technology policy. 

Resolution 5: Establishing The Technology Committee, passed unanimously at the Assembly meeting. The new committee is designed to address and advise on changing technology policies in the face of generative AI and other emerging technologies. 

The committee will “provide recommendations on policies, programs, and initiatives,” and will “serve as the primary student voice on issues including digital tools … and policies concerning merging technologies such as generative AI,” according to the resolution.

Hayden Watkins ’28, the Assembly vice president for finance, was one of the sponsors of the resolution, which was designed to improve channels of communication with administration regarding technology. 

“The [Technology Committee] will be a fantastic avenue for us students to communicate with administration and advise the Student Assembly on student perspectives on AI, hate speech on social media, and other issues relating to technology,” Watkins wrote in a statement sent to The Sun.

According to the resolution, the University has “historically relied on ad hoc student surveys and feedback mechanisms” to learn student perspectives, “but no formal or consistent channel exists for student input on University-wide technology governance decisions.”

While formal policy decisions relating to technology and its usage are done by University administrators, Student Assembly Bylaws state that the Assembly may create committees to “review all policies and programs … that create policy directly affecting student life.”

Membership of the committee will be selected by the Assembly and the IT Governance Liaison will serve as its chair.

In an email sent to students on August 28 from the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, the University acknowledged that while new technologies like generative artificial intelligence tools are “changing the educational landscape” and offer “incredible opportunities for learning,” they can also present various risks if used improperly. 

However, the email did not establish a uniform AI policy, leaving specific policies up to individual professors in alignment with the existing Code of Academic Integrity and the undergraduate Essential Guide to Academic Integrity.  

“Faculty will likely set different parameters around the appropriate use of generative AI in their courses,” the email read. “It is your responsibility to pay close attention to their course-specific guidelines.”

This approach mirrors peer institutions, which have been hesitant to issue bans on the use of generative AI, though schools including Columbia and Princeton have prohibited the use of AI for academics without instructor approval. 

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New technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI) may have homeowners  in the Central Okanagan thinking twice about what they put into their curbside garbage and recycling bins.

Chad Evans is a recycling truck driver and says hazardous materials are ending up in the truck far too often.

“Every day,” he said. “Probably one in 10 bins.”

It’s hoped those numbers can be reduced with a new system being used across the Regional District of Central Okanagan (RDCO).

Called ‘Prairie Robotics’, the system involves mounted cameras that capture images of material going into the recycling trucks.

“As the bin is being emptied into the truck, that is when the hundreds or thousands of pictures are being taken and that’s getting sent back to our system,” said Brody Hawkins, district manager for Environmental 360 Solutions (E360s), the company contracted for curbside pickup by the RDCO.

“What that system does with those pictures is it uses AI to monitor all the contamination.”

The technology is then able to track the contaminated material back to the home involved.

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“We use the GPS coordinates of the garbage bin to identify the address,” said Hawkins.

The RDCO then sends an information postcard to that address.

The postcard is meant to act as a warning but one that could be followed by fines if the problem persists.

“They have an image of what the truck is seeing, so they can see exactly what they put in there that doesn’t belong and some more information,” said Cynthia Coates, supervisor of solid waste services for RDCO.

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High levels of garbage found in Central Okanagan recycling

Some of the hazardous material that is still ending up in curbside bins too often range from corrosive, flammable, or poisonous items to less obvious things like batteries and battery operated devices, such as e-cigarettes, power tools, and smoking alarms.

According to Coates, propane tanks are also being discarded in the bins.

“I’m seeing notification of fires at both our landfill and in our trucks and in our recycling facilities more than ever,” Coates said. “So I think it’s becoming more prevalent than ever.”

In July, a fire erupted in the hopper of a recycling  truck in Kelowna.

The driver was forced to dump the load in a nearby parking lot.

A metal fuel filter improperly placed in a recycling bin was the suspected cause.

Right now, four of the seven E360s recycling trucks are equipped with the new AI technology.

The new system will be installed in the remaining three in the coming weeks.

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Recycling truck fire sparks warning from Central Okanagan

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MULANJE, Malawi — Alex Maere survived the destruction of Cyclone Freddy when it tore through southern Malawi in 2023. His farm didn’t.

The 59-year-old saw decades of work disappear with the precious soil that the floods stripped from his small-scale farm in the foothills of Mount Mulanje.

He was used to producing a healthy 850 kilograms (1,870 pounds) of corn each season to support his three daughters and two sons. He salvaged just 8 kilograms (17 pounds) from the wreckage of Freddy.

“This is not a joke,” he said, remembering how his farm in the village of Sazola became a wasteland of sand and rocks.

Freddy jolted Maere into action. He decided he needed to change his age-old tactics if he was to survive.

He is now one of thousands of small-scale farmers in the southern African country using a generative AI chatbot designed by the non-profit Opportunity International for farming advice.

The Malawi government is backing the project, having seen the agriculture-dependent nation hit recently by a series of cyclones and an El Niño-induced drought. Malawi’s food crisis, which is largely down to the struggles of small-scale farmers, is a central issue for its national elections next week.

More than 80% of Malawi’s population of 21 million rely on agriculture for their livelihoods and the country has one of the highest poverty rates in the world, according to the World Bank.

The AI chatbot suggested Maere grow potatoes last year alongside his staple corn and cassava to adjust to his changed soil. He followed the instructions to the letter, he said, and cultivated half a soccer field’s worth of potatoes and made more than $800 in sales, turning around his and his children’s fortunes.

“I managed to pay for their school fees without worries,” he beamed.

Artificial intelligence has the potential to uplift agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 33-50 million smallholder farms like Maere’s produce up to 70-80% of the food supply, according to the U.N.’s International Fund for Agricultural Development. Yet productivity in Africa — with the world’s fast-growing population to feed — is lagging behind despite vast tracts of arable land.

As AI’s use surges across the globe, so it is helping African farmers access new information to identify crop diseases, forecast drought, design fertilizers to boost yields, and even locate an affordable tractor. Private investment in agriculture-related tech in sub-Saharan Africa went from $10 million in 2014 to $600 million in 2022, according to the World Bank.

But not without challenges.

Africa has hundreds of languages for AI tools to learn. Even then, few farmers have smartphones and many can’t read. Electricity and internet service are patchy at best in rural areas, and often non-existent.

“One of the biggest challenges to sustainable AI use in African agriculture is accessibility,” said Daniel Mvalo, a Malawian technology specialist. “Many tools fail to account for language diversity, low literacy and poor digital infrastructure.”

The AI tool in Malawi tries to do that. The app is called Ulangizi, which means advisor in the country’s Chichewa language. It is WhatsApp-based and works in Chichewa and English. You can type or speak your question, and it replies with an audio or text response, said Richard Chongo, Opportunity International’s country director for Malawi.

“If you can’t read or write, you can take a picture of your crop disease and ask, ‘What is this?’ And the app will respond,” he said.

But to work in Malawi, AI still needs a human touch. For Maere’s area, that is the job of 33-year-old Patrick Napanja, a farmer support agent who brings a smartphone with the app for those who have no devices. Chongo calls him the “human in the loop.”

“I used to struggle to provide answers to some farming challenges, now I use the app,” said Napanja.

Farmer support agents like Napanja generally have around 150-200 farmers to help and try to visit them in village groups once a week. But sometimes, most of an hour-long meeting is taken up waiting for responses to load because of the area’s poor connectivity, he said. Other times, they have to trudge up nearby hills to get a signal.

They are the simple but stubborn obstacles millions face taking advantage of technology that others have at their fingertips.

For African farmers living on the edge of poverty, the impact of bad advice or AI “hallucinations” can be far more devastating than for those using it to organize their emails or put together a work presentation.

Mvalo, the tech specialist, warned that inaccurate AI advice like a chatbot misidentifying crop diseases could lead to action that ruins the crop as well as a struggling farmer’s livelihood.

“Trust in AI is fragile,” he said. “If it fails even once, many farmers may never try it again.”

The Malawian government has invested in Ulangizi and it is programmed to align with the agriculture ministry’s own official farming advice, making it more relevant for Malawians, said Webster Jassi, the agriculture extension methodologies officer at the ministry.

But he said Malawi faces challenges in getting the tool to enough communities to make an extensive difference. Those communities don’t just need smartphones, but also to be able to afford internet access.

For Malawi, the potential may be in combining AI with traditional collaboration among communities.

“Farmers who have access to the app are helping fellow farmers,” Jassi said, and that is improving productivity.

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