On July 24, the Black at Mila community hosted Prof. Vukosi Marivate @vukosi (University of Pretoria, co-founder of Masakhane, Lelapa AI, an…

On July 24, the Black at Mila community hosted Prof. Vukosi Marivate @vukosi (University of Pretoria, co-founder of Masakhane, Lelapa AI, and Deep Learning Indaba) for a powerful session on the future of AI evaluation. Speaking to a packed auditorium and online audience, Prof. Marivate delivered his talk, "What Do Our Benchmarks Actually Measure? Evaluation Challenges for African Language AI." He examined how current NLP benchmarks, built around assumptions from well-resourced languages, capture only a narrow slice of linguistic reality, and made the case for evaluation frameworks that reflect linguistic diversity and community priorities. The presentation was followed by a fireside chat with our founder and scientific advisor @Yoshua_Bengio exploring AI safety, governance, research ecosystem building, and whose priorities shape global AI development. A huge thank you to Prof. Marivate for visiting, to Yoshua Bengio for joining the conversation, and to the Black at Mila team for bringing this important event together!

Source: Yoshua Bengio (X) | 2026-08-06