Global nonprofit organisation City.AI has welcomed South Africa as a new member and is inviting local artificial intelligence (AI) practitioners to attend its first Cape Town City.AI event, which will be held on March 27.  

The organisation organises gatherings of AI practitioners on a quarterly basis across more than 40 cities, globally.

Law firm Cullinan & Associates senior associate David Anderson, design-led innovation studio Motsoaledi & West CEO Lethabo Motsoaledi, innovation consultants Q-division data scientist Neil du Toit and University of Cape Town (UCT) data scientist and Engineers Without Borders founder Wiebke Toussaint, will present a panel discussion at the Cape Town event.

The panel will be moderated by UCT computational neuroscience candidate Christoper Currin.

These industry peers will share insights and actionable advice, based on applied experience of AI. There will also be peer-to-peer sessions on machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision and clinic sessions for practitioners to share their specific challenges.  

City.AI believes that by mapping local AI ecosystems and engaging with experts, it can "better connect peers in AI to each other, source and curate local knowledge, and enable more people to learn and collaborate in the field of applied AI globally”.

Cape Town AI ambassador Chantal Louw comments that bringing City.AI to Cape town is a step to creating a bridge to more than 50 communities across six continents, as well as the well-connected organisations, companies and educational institutions in each city’s ecosystem.

“AI has been around for many years, but its time has now come for bigger scale implementation from healthcare to financial services. AI can aid in making insightful decisions; therefore, discussions around AI are unavoidable and important as discussions assist us in demystifying it,” states Motsoaledi.

Toussaint adds that AI already dominates peoples’ mobile digital lives. “With the expansion of the Internet into the Internet of Things, AI will soon also dominate our physical lives.

Currin concludes that AI is becoming integral to many aspects of human life. “It has the potential to further humanity by solving complex problems and menial tasks. To realise its potential, it is paramount we have diverse, informed, and insightful discussions that reflect the current state and define our future.”