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- While AI holds significant potential, huge risks are attached to the technology.
- The effect the technology will have is currently controllable.
- South Africa is yet to develop an AI strategy.
- For more stories, visit the Tech and Trends homepage.
AI can either lead to the age of
wisdom or despair in South Africa, and the path that is taken is in South
Africa's control.
So said Professor Tshilidzi Marwala, the rector of the United Nations University, who was speaking on the topic of AI at the Mapungubwe annual lecture held at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) on 6 December.
Marwala was the former vice-chancellor at UJ and has been a leader in discussions about AI for more than two decades.
Referencing to a quote in a Charles Dickens novel, he said AI might send the country down a path of wisdom or despair.
"Whether it becomes the age of wisdom depends entirely on what we do. It depends on what we do as individuals, as organisations, as countries and so on and so forth."
While large language models powered by AI represent the "new wave", Marwala said the technology took multiple forms.
"Artificial intelligence is nothing but a technique to make machines think act and interact."While different types of AI have
huge potential to solve problems affecting humanity, he added the UN also
recognised the risk the technology could pose to privacy, bias and
discrimination, transparency, job displacement, security, and accountability.
The goal of the technology should be to maximise the good that comes from the technology while minimising the potential harm.
Marwala said he was part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution commission that set out a roadmap of how to achieve this goal in 2018.Educate South Africa on AI.
Establish a National AI Institute.
Use AI to reindustrialise South Africa.
Establish a data institute.
Incentivise the adoption of AI.
Build AI infrastructure.
Educate lawmakers on AI.
Develop implementation capacity.
He added while some progress had
been made on these goals, South Africa was still lagging behind other
countries.
International progress
Marwala said key questions relating to the use of AI still needed to be answered.
"Artificial intelligence gives us knowledge, it does not give us wisdom.
"So that step of taking knowledge to wisdom is still a step that we need to find out how it's going to be done. Is it going to be done by technology? Is it going to be done by humans?"
Currently, 67 countries have taken strides to answer those sorts of questions as they have developed AI strategies, he claimed.
South Africa is not one of them.
US President Joe Biden issued an executive order in October to put policies in place to ensure America seized the promise and managed the risk of AI.
In the UK, an AI safety conference was hosted last month where the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak sat down to chat with Elon Musk for almost an hour about AI policy.
Marwala said South Africa would have to start taking similar action to avoid falling behind the rest of the world.
"The world is now being divided into two: the data-rich countries and the data-poor countries."
He added the UN had the responsibility to bridge that data gap.
"Right now, it is clear which part of the world is winning when it comes to this new type of AI."
Marwala said the US and China were currently streaks ahead of anyone else in the world in terms of AI development.
