The just ended two day seminar hosted by Deep Learning Indaba X Zimbabwe in partnership with Nyaradzo Group and ZINDI was a gratifying learning experience for me. First as an upcoming Artificial Intelligence (AI) Researcher the seminar had a lot of golden nuggets that were passed around by other AI enthusiasts and Data scientists in Zimbabwe. It quickly dawned that there is much more to AI than just ChatGPT.
The event was held under the theme: “AI & Industry – Research applications and unlocking opportunities in Zimbabwe.” It ran from the 27th to the 28th of July 28, 2023 at the SEAL Hub, Harare.
Here is a summary of the main key points:
- Like it or not data drives the world.
- There a huge gap between industry and data science that needs to be closed as a matter of urgency for AI to work smoothly.
- Everyone needs to become a programmer in one way or another in order to stay relevant in this 4th Industrial Revolution.
- Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing the all the four industries namely the primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary industries.
- AI is expected to generate a revenue of $13 trillion USD by 2030, (basically 7 years from now).
- There is a hunger for AI research that meets specific industry needs and the research needs to be translated into practical solutions.
- AI is not new it has been there for quite some time now it’s only now that it has become a buzzword on everyone’s lips and even on Linked In.
- AI has the ability to be used in any industry you can think of from health, finance and agriculture to mention but a few.
- There are currently a lot of challenges with the successful implementation of AI in Zimbabwe with the following challenges topping the list lack of big data, limited infrastructure and resources and last but not least absence of policies that regulate the smooth adoption of AI models.
- Deep Learning is a subset of Machine Learning which is also a subset of Artificial Intelligence.
For now let me stop here. I will share more information in my next post. Stay tuned.
