Hosted by the DSI Computational Social Science Working Group as part of their Research & Networking Series
Speaker: Daniel Björkegren, Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs, School of International and Public Affairs
Registration Request Form: Registration will be prioritized for Columbia faculty and affiliated scholars. If you are a postdoctoral researcher, student, or external guest, you may be waitlisted to attend until closer to the event date. All who submit on the below form will receive a confirmation email and a calendar hold if your registration is approved. Thank you again for your interest in attending!
Could AI Leapfrog the Web? Evidence from Teachers in Sierra Leone
Only 37% of sub-Saharan Africans use the internet, and those who do seldom rely on traditional web search. A major reason is that bandwidth is scarce and costly. We study whether an AI-powered WhatsApp chatbot can bridge this gap by analyzing 40,350 queries submitted by 529 Sierra Leonean teachers over 17 months. Each month, more teachers relied on AI than web search for teaching assistance. We compare the AI responses to the top results from google.com.sl, which mostly returns web pages formatted for foreign users: just 2% of pages originate in-country. Each web page consumes 3,107 times more bandwidth than an AI response on average. As a result, querying AI through WhatsApp is 98% less expensive than loading a web page, even including AI compute costs. In blinded evaluations, an independent sample of teachers rate AI responses as more relevant, helpful, and correct answers to queries than web search results. These findings suggest that AI may be able to provide cost-effective access to information in low-connectivity environments.