The Department of Computer Science on carving development and future-focused technology
Artificial Intelligence, known as AI, has created unprecedented efficiencies across a wide variety of processes. Talking us through these various processes and the work done by some of their researchers was HOD of UJ’s Department of Computer Science, Professor Duncan Coulter.
The work done by Prof Coulter looks into systems that are built up of independent autonomous parts that need to cooperate in order to achieve a given goal. The mechanisms that he explores for them to do that are built around naturally occurring intelligent processes. “My research focuses less often on ones that are modelled around the brain and instead focuses on those modelled around other biological and natural processes such as evolutionary and immunological processes. I do have postgraduate students who work with AI that is built around simplified models of how the brain works, but my primary researcher is not focused on that,” he said. On how far we are with AI development in South Africa, Prof Coulter said there was a lot of scope for application of AI technologies, particularly given the cost of labour coupled with the need to reach a lot of people and offer services delivery. “The chat-oriented service agents are going to see lots of use in South Africa as well as office automation. In terms of being the primary drivers for the development of the underlying technologies, unfortunately, South Africa is not at the forefront but I do think that we stand a chance at making inroads in the application of those technologies,” he said.
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