More institutes specializing in artificial intelligence are planned for South Africa.
Plans are afoot to establish another institute specializing in artificial intelligence (AI), this time in Saldanha Bay in the Western Cape.
This was revealed by Anish Kurien, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) and Acting Director of TUT AI Hub.
So far, the multi-stakeholder venture with the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies has launched a third AI hub at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in 2022, TUT in 2023 and Central University in February . technology.
The fourth AI hub will be launched next month at the SA Military Academy, based in Saldanha Bay. The academy is a military unit of the South African National Defense Force and is home to the Faculty of Military Science at Stellenbosch University.
“We plan to launch it in early May,” Kurien said of the next AI hub. “The idea is to have this national hub as the first defined strategy, by having laboratories operating at national level. The number of hubs operating in different areas will expand.”
The establishment of the AI Institute marks the realization of one of the Presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution (PC4IR) recommendations that South Africa establish an AI Institute to leapfrog the country’s digital future.
It is also expected to serve as a common foundation for knowledge generation, research and development, and the ability to implement AI applications in areas such as health, agriculture, finance, mining, manufacturing, and government.
TUT formed some of the first higher education institutions to host an AI hub.
Each hub is linked to an economic sector that can be enhanced through AI and a series of catalytic projects.
For example, the UJ Hub focuses on industries such as the manufacturing value chain, retail, fintech, digital mining, energy sector, digital banking and identity, and the criminal justice system.
In the case of TUT, these are tied to the automotive, agriculture, food production, 4IR manufacturing, tourism, health, transport and communications sectors.
Like other AI hubs, the objectives of the TUT hub align with some of the recommendations in the PC4IR report. “The report specified a number of goals, one of which was the establishment of an AI research institute.
“Increasing interest in the Institute requires us to contribute to building AI skills in the national ecosystem. One of our objectives as an Institute is to encourage young students and academics in the field of AI. It's about really building your skills and being able to be exposed to this new field.
“Part of our objective is to equip people with the necessary knowledge of various AI-related skills, and we are putting a lot of effort into that.”
According to the professor, TUT has been involved in the AI field for quite some time. As a result, the higher education institution is implementing a number of research and innovation projects to support the AI hub.
“We have done a lot of work, from AI in healthcare to AI in manufacturing. We are doing very strong work on applying AI to agriculture and food production. We are also working on new areas focused on generative AI and large-scale language models for the education sector. We also have interests in the communications and transportation sectors.
“While the breadth of our application areas is very broad, our focus and philosophy is to enhance the ability of our students to adopt AI technologies and train them through these different initiatives,” he said.
Anish Kurien, Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at TUT and Acting Director of the TUT AI Hub.
