Ibrahim Denis Fofanah
Data Scientist & AI Researcher
Data scientist and AI researcher at Pace University. I coined Artificial Frictional Unemployment, and built the first machine learning model for crop yield prediction in Sierra Leone. Author of Understanding Agentic AI. I write about agentic systems and applied ML, with a bias toward what actually works, and who gets left out when it doesn't.
GPT-5.6 Sol Cheated Its Own Evaluation. METR Says That Is the Reassuring Part.
METR's GPT-5.6 Sol evaluation produced three different time-horizon numbers depending on how cheating was counted, and METR says none of them measure the model. The two things the coverage missed matter more.
Ibrahim Denis Fofanah·Sep 25, 2026·8 min
The Weather Forecast Was Wrong in a Predictable Way
A lightweight machine-learning correction doubled the reported average skill of ECMWF’s subseasonal AI forecasts and won a real-time forecasting competition. The larger lesson is useful far beyond weather: before replacing a model, find out whether its mistakes are systematic enough to learn.
Ibrahim Denis Fofanah·Sep 25, 2026·12 min
Your SQL Query Did Not Fail. NULL Changed the Question.
NULL does not mean zero, blank, or false. It introduces UNKNOWN, and that third truth value can quietly change filters, exclusions, joins, and aggregates.
Ibrahim Denis Fofanah·Sep 25, 2026·10 min
Korea and AfDB Announced an Africa AI Hub. The Missing Number Is the Budget.
Korea and the AfDB announced an Africa AI Hub, but the public agreement discloses no budget, governance model or delivery targets. Here is the scorecard that would turn intent into infrastructure.
Ibrahim Denis Fofanah·Sep 25, 2026·8 min
Africa’s Agricultural AI Has an Invisible Bottleneck: Ground Truth
Ten African countries already have rich farm-survey infrastructure. The hard part is turning it into interoperable, privacy-safe ground truth for agricultural AI.
Ibrahim Denis Fofanah·Sep 25, 2026·8 min
Your KPI Needs a Contract: Build Metrics That Survive Dashboards and AI
A metric is more than an aggregation. Define its entity, grain, time, eligibility, joins, tests, and change policy so dashboards and AI return the same answer.
Ibrahim Denis Fofanah·Sep 25, 2026·9 min
Data Science Is Growing 34.6%. The Entry Door Is Still Getting Narrower.
BLS projects data-scientist employment to grow 34.6% through 2035. That does not mean the first job is easier to get: AI is changing junior work and raising the value of judgment, verification and context.
Ibrahim Denis Fofanah·Sep 18, 2026·7 min
AI Is Broadening Jobs Before Titles Change. The Evidence Is Narrower Than It Sounds.
OpenAI found that some workers repeatedly used AI for tasks outside their occupational boundaries. The signal is real, but the sample is a selected slice of active ChatGPT users, not the workforce.
Ibrahim Denis Fofanah·Sep 17, 2026·8 min
Anthropic Scanned 481 Million Transcripts. Its First Search Still Missed an Incident.
Anthropic's first scan of roughly 141,000 cyber-evaluation transcripts found three real-world incidents and missed a fourth. A later search across 481 million transcripts found it. The gap is a practical lesson in telemetry, scope, and why an agent's chain of thought is not ground truth.
Ibrahim Denis Fofanah·Sep 13, 2026·9 min
ToolGrad Starts With the Answer, Then Writes the Question
ToolGrad builds a verified tool chain before writing the user query. The method produced 99.8% valid synthetic examples, but its strongest results remain limited to single-turn tool use.
Ibrahim Denis Fofanah·Sep 13, 2026·9 min
LangGraph vs AutoGen vs CrewAI: The 2026 Comparison Is Already Out of Date
The popular three-way comparison is stale: AutoGen is now maintenance-only, folded into the Microsoft Agent Framework (1.0, April 2026). The real live choice is LangGraph vs CrewAI, and the honest first question is whether you need a framework at all.
Ibrahim Denis Fofanah·Sep 11, 2026·7 min
Your Pipeline Passed. Your Dashboard Is Still Wrong.
A green pipeline only proves the code ran. This practical guide shows how contracts, freshness checks, semantic tests, lineage, and safe promotion catch schema drift before it corrupts a dashboard.
Ibrahim Denis Fofanah·Sep 11, 2026·7 min
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