Worldwide AI

One of the consequences of the growth in AI research in South Africa in recent years is the establishment of a number of research hubs involved in AI activities ranging from mobile robotics and computational intelligence to knowledge representation and reasoning and human language technologies. In this survey we take the reader through a quick tour of the research being conducted at these hubs and touch on an initiative to maintain and extend the current level of interest in AI research in the country. Despite a peaceful transition to a democratic dispensation in 1994, South Africa is still struggling to achieve the goal of providing decent basic education to the majority of its citizens. The lack of quality education on the primary and secondary levels also serves as a barrier to obtaining tertiary-level education. According to a 2008 OECD review of national policies for education in South Africa, typically only 15 percent to 18 percent of secondary school students who sit for their final year exams every year qualify automatically for university-level education; and this number seems to be decreasing as more students choose to complete subjects on so-called standard grade instead of higher grade, a trend that is especially apparent for mathematics and science, the two fields with critical skills shortages in the country.