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Zero-Shot Transfer with Deictic Object-Oriented Representation in Reinforcement Learning

Neural Information Processing Systems

Object-oriented representations in reinforcement learning have shown promise in transfer learning, with previous research introducing a propositional objectoriented framework that has provably efficient learning bounds with respect to sample complexity. However, this framework has limitations in terms of the classes of tasks it can efficiently learn. In this paper we introduce a novel deictic objectoriented framework that has provably efficient learning bounds and can solve a broader range of tasks. Additionally, we show that this framework is capable of zero-shot transfer of transition dynamics across tasks and demonstrate this empirically for the Taxi and Sokoban domains.


African drone company uses AI to give vital help to US fruit and nut farmers

FOX News

South Africa's Aerobotics is utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) in helping fruit and nut farmers in over 18 countries. JOHANNESBURG - South Africa's Aerobotics is utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) in helping fruit and nut farmers improve crop yields. Although the Cape Town-based company only started nine years ago, it is already operating in 18 countries, with the U.S. being their largest market, followed by South Africa, Australia, Spain and Portugal. Its customers produce tens of millions of tons of fresh produce every year. California is now ground zero for Aerobotics โ€“ where the company has the biggest concentration of customers.


The (AI) therapist is in: Can chatbots boost mental health?

The Japan Times

JOHANNESBURG/LONDON โ€“ Mental health counselor Nicole Doyle was stunned when the head of the U.S. National Eating Disorders Association showed up at a staff meeting to announce the group would be replacing its helpline with a chatbot. A few days after the helpline was taken down, the bot -- named Tessa -- would also be discontinued for providing harmful advice to people in the throes of mental illness. "People โ€ฆ found it was giving out weight loss advice to people who told it they were struggling with an eating disorder," said Doyle, 33, one of five workers who were let go in March, about a year after the chatbot was launched. This could be due to a conflict with your ad-blocking or security software. Please add japantimes.co.jp and piano.io to your list of allowed sites.


Design of a Smart Waste Management System for the City of Johannesburg

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Every human being in this world produces waste. South Africa is a developing country with many townships that have limited waste resources. Over-increasing population growth overpowers the volume of most municipal authorities to provide even the most essential services. Waste in townships is produced via littering, dumping of bins, cutting of trees, dumping of waste near rivers, and overrunning of waste bins. Waste increases diseases, air pollution, and environmental pollution, and lastly increases gas emissions that contribute to the release of greenhouse gases. The ungathered waste is dumped widely in the streets and drains contributing to flooding, breeding of insects, rodent vectors, and spreading of diseases. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to design a smart waste management system for the city of Johannesburg. The city of Johannesburg contains waste municipality workers and has provided some areas with waste resources such as waste bins and trucks for collecting waste. But the problem is that the resources only are not enough to solve the problem of waste in the city. The waste municipality uses traditional ways of collecting waste such as going to each street and picking up waste bins. The traditional way has worked for years but as the population is increasing more waste is produced which causes various problems for the waste municipalities and the public at large. The proposed system consists of sensors, user applications, and a real-time monitoring system. This paper adopts the experimental methodology.


Data Architect at Luno - Johannesburg

#artificialintelligence

Our engineering team is split into organisations which we call Fleets. Each Fleet focuses on a core customer journey (onboarding, security, payments, support, new business, growth, and marketing, etc.). Each of these fleets contains multiple smaller teams called Pods, each of which focuses on a specific aspect of the product. Pods will include a product owner, product designer, back-end engineers, Android, iOS, and Web developers, who each bring a unique perspective to the problem you are all contributing towards. Luno offers a "Remote but Reachable" working approach.


Engineer, Machine Learning at Standard Bank Group - Johannesburg, South Africa

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Standard Bank Group is a leading Africa-focused financial services group, and an innovative player on the global stage, that offers a variety of career-enhancing opportunities โ€“ plus the chance to work alongside some of the sector's most talented, motivated professionals. Our clients range from individuals, to businesses of all sizes, high net worth families and large multinational corporates and institutions. Bringing true, meaningful value to our clients and the communities we serve and creating a real sense of purpose for you. To work with business stakeholders to identify and deliver on new AI initiatives. To apply deep domain expertise to shape/influence the AI-thinking in the organisation through thought leadership; enabling the successful adoption and acceleration of AI and ML across Standard Bank Group (SBG), ensuring the needs of stakeholders are correctly understood and addressed.


The role of AI in efficiency and idea generation: an LSD perspective - TechCentral

#artificialintelligence

When I was young, I was in the car with my dad and best friend, driving from Johannesburg to Durban. I remember we were talking in the back seat when my friend said he is sad that everything has already been invented. My dad immediately responded, "You can't think like that", and proceeded to explain to us that people who thought like never had any ideas. At the start of LSD, which was early 2000, we installed Linux. That was it, just Linux.


One Startup's Plan to Help Africa Lure Back Its AI Talent

WIRED

During a trip home to Johannesburg, South Africa, while completing an engineering master's program in Japan, Pelonomi Moiloa attended the largest machine learning community gathering she'd ever seen in Africa, just a few miles from where she grew up. In all, 600 people from 22 nations attended 2017's Deep Learning Indaba, held at the University of Witwatersrand, discussing topics like health care and agriculture solutions custom-made to meet the needs of African people. That week-long gathering made Moiloa feel she could have an impact on the lives of Africans, and it helped convince her to move back to South Africa and look for a way to put her engineering skills to work on her home continent. "The conversations were around making a genuine impact and positive change in African lives on a mass scale, and that was something I really wanted to be a part of," she says. This month, Moiloa will join some organizers of Deep Learning Indaba to launch Lelapa, a commercial and industrial AI research company focused on serving the needs of the 1 billion people in Africa.


SAP CML Developer at Standard Bank Group - Johannesburg, South Africa

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Degree in Information Technology Experience Required 5-7 years - Broad experience in translating business and functional requirements into technical specifications and developing the programming code to create the solutions.


Manager, Data Science at Standard Bank Group - Johannesburg, South Africa

#artificialintelligence

To assist with advanced analytics and deep insight by being a proactive partner in providing customer centric data analytics, including alternative methods of aggregating raw data (internal and external), which will ultimately influence the way in which we view and act on customer behaviour and customer health, i.e. identifying risks and opportunities. Implementing the use of machine learning to challenge and improve predictive modelling techniques, the available characteristic universe across the customer life cycle and optimising segmentation to enhance model performance. Solutions should satisfy customer centricity and digitisation objectives. Including but not limited to Extracting meaningful insights from data, Predictive modelling and machine learning, Stakeholder Engagement, Leadership and People Management.