Bright Simons fires back, rejects claims he used AI to critique SIGA report

Vice President of Imani Africa Bright Simons dismissed allegations by State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA) Director-General Michael Kpessa-Whyte that he utilized artificial intelligence to critique SIGA's recent report. Speaking on JoyNews' Newsfile on September 5, Simons vehemently rejected the notion that he had outsourced his analysis to AI, calling it "absolutely offensive."

Kpessa-Whyte had questioned how Simons managed to produce a comprehensive assessment shortly after the 448-page report's release, contending that SIGA's investigations revealed "most of his criticisms were generated from AI." He also claimed that the AI analysis depended on outdated figures rather than those from the report itself, urging readers to scrutinize the report thoroughly before making claims.

Simons countered that technology was employed solely to streamline data extraction, not to supplant his professional judgment. He elaborated that his team utilized tools such as Tabula to extract figures from PDF files and Excel Power Query to process the data. "Nobody has time to manually copy and paste every single number from a PDF into Excel before conducting an analysis," Simons stated.

He assured that his extensive experience in policy analysis over two decades allowed him to swiftly identify areas necessitating closer examination. "We know exactly where the fault lines are," he emphasized.

Simons maintained that the core issue wasn't the use of AI tools but whether SIGA adequately addressed the specific errors he identified. He alleged that certain cost figures were duplicated across multiple years, undermining the reliability of the reported ratios. "When you replicate the same cash number for 13 years simply by copying and pasting, that figure becomes unreliable," Simons argued.

He also challenged SIGA's handling of foreign-exchange and revaluation gains, as well as its consolidation of transactions between entities. "For instance, how you consolidated... you didn't reconcile them," Simons pointed out, noting that failing to do so rendered the consolidation unreliable. Simons asserted that these were precise technical concerns that SIGA had yet to resolve.

"These are very specific claims," he noted. "However, you suggest that we've done nothing and merely relied on AI to say things we don't know. I don't believe that's fair."