Up in Johannesburg there’s inclement weather bringing a chill to the air as we head into April. While you will have no prank from us tomorrow, you will have a new edition of the weekly africast to listen to.

The team is scattered this week, but Luis Monzon and Clint Matos sit down together for the first time to chat about the forthcoming releases.

Before that, however, we need to chat about the stories that grabbed our attention this week starting with a call to pause further developments in AI more advanced than GPT-4. The call was made via an open letter penned by the Future of Life Institute (FLI) and has garnered signatories including the co-founder of Pinterest, Evan Sharp, the chief executive officer of Getty Images, Craig Peters and Elon Musk.

Then, we chat about the woeful state of the Pokémon Trading Card Game Live. The online client of the popular game was barely functional as a new expansion released with frequent crashes. It hasn’t been a good week for game launches with The Last of Us Part 1 for PC experiencing several game breaking bugs when it launched earlier this week.

Finally, members of the Open For Business coalition, including tech giants Google and Microsoft denounced Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ legislation. The legislation which is still a bill until it is signed by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, could see the death penalty being imposed on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer people.

“Let us be clear: this is not about ‘values’. Promoting violence and discrimination against people for who they are and who they love is wrong and any disingenuous attempts to justify this on the basis of ‘values’ should be called out and condemned,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said last week.

That’s it for this week.

MENTIONED IN THIS AFRICAST:

• Should we hit pause on AI research? Here’s how to add your voice
• Pokémon TCG Live crumbles as Scarlet & Violet releases
• Google, Microsoft decry Uganda’s LGBTQ+ death penalty bill

[Image – Erik Mclean on Unsplash]