Organisations across the board are looking to artificial intelligence (AI) to find ways to more accurately manage risk, enhance efficiencies to reduce operating costs, and improve experiences for clients and customers. Nvidia has conducted a survey with some of the world's leading financial institutions to find out what's on the top of their minds. Below are the top four findings gleaned from the "State of AI in Financial Services: 2023 Trends" survey taken by nearly 500 global financial services professionals. Financial services firms, like other enterprises, are looking to optimise spending for AI training and inference -- with the knowledge that sensitive data can't be migrated to the cloud. To do so cost-effectively, they're moving many of their compute-intensive workloads to the hybrid cloud.

Edtech startup Mindjoy reached more than 1 200 children between the ages of 11 and 15 during the July and August winter breaks with its artificial intelligence (AI) hackathons. Hackathons were hosted by 14 schools in KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and the Western Cape, as well as virtually for children in Kenya and the Netherlands. Plans are in place to reach a further 10 schools by the end of September, in an effort to help learners come to grips with the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and what AI means for their future. Mindjoy's hackathons immerse students in a world of code and allow them to learn with some of the most advanced AI technology in the world – GPT-3 created by OpenAI. Students are given "kid-shaped" problems – such as doing their homework – to solve, and a technology to use to build solutions to the problems.

Africa has had massive oil and gas discoveries in recent years – including the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim offshore Senegal and Mauritania, the Luiperd and Brulpadda in South Africa and the Rovuma Basin discoveries offshore Mozambique, among others – but development has been slow owing largely to restricted investment, Covid-19 impacts and a lack of modern digital solutions. With more than 600-million people living without access to electricity in Africa, the accelerated development of Africa's oil and gas is key for making energy poverty history. Now, with the emergence of AI and analytics across the oil and gas sector, an opportunity has risen for Africa to drive modern and sustainable energy growth for years to come. With oil and gas production decreasing in Africa due to natural declines in legacy projects, increasing the use of AI and analytics across the upstream segment could help simplify drilling activities, revitalise the sector and expand the continent's hydrocarbons reserves for energy reliability, saving project developers, operators and owners time and resources. Furthermore, with African hydrocarbon-producing countries such as Nigeria losing billions in revenue due to theft and vandalism of infrastructure – a condition that is restraining Africa's oil and gas sector from expanding – AI and analytics tools can help optimisa industry growth by enhancing infrastructure maintenance and security across the entire oil and gas value chain, thereby helping reduce energy and revenue loss, and in the process stimulating investments across the oil and gas sector. What's more, despite Africa accounting for less than 3% of all carbon emissions, global energy transition related policies are hindering the deployment of investments necessary for boosting the continent's hydrocarbons sector.

Kaspersky has become a shareholder of Motive Neuromorphic Technologies, a company specialising in neuromorphic computing technologies, with a 15% stake. The organisations' joint development efforts are aimed at creating new opportunities for machine learning-based solutions: self-learning systems and smart devices of the future. In 2019, Kaspersky concluded a cooperation agreement with Motive NT, joining it in the development of the Altai neuromorphic processor, which accelerates the hardware of systems using Machine Learning. During the partnership, the companies' specialists together produced their first batch of neuromorphic processors, developed a software package for them and successfully confirmed their performance on measures of speed and energy efficiency through experimentation. The companies are currently working on developing a second version of the neuromorphic processor, as well as searching for technological partners to establish joint pilot projects using the Altai neurochip.

In a voyage lasting 40 days and conquering approximately 3 500 unmanned miles at sea, the Mayflower Autonomous Ship arrived in North America in Halifax, Nova Scotia on June 5, 2022. Following two years of design, construction and AI model training, the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) was officially launched in September 2020. Fast forward to 5 June 2022, and the ship completed an historic transatlantic voyage from Plymouth, UK to its North American arrival in Halifax, Nova Scotia. With no human captain or onboard crew, MAS is the first self-directed autonomous ship with technology that is scalable and extendible to traverse the Atlantic Ocean. MAS was designed and built by marine research non-profit ProMare with IBM acting as lead technology and science partner, with IBM automation, AI and edge computing technologies powering the ship's artificial intelligence (AI) captain to guide the vessel and make real-time decisions while at sea.

The demand for artificial intelligence (AI), data, and digital tools is soaring as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to put a strain on many enterprises. This is among the findings in a new study conducted by Corinium and sponsored by Fico. The report, "Building AI-Driven Enterprises in a Disrupted Environment", surveyed more than 100 c-level analytic and data executives and conducted in-depth interviews to understand how organisations are developing and deploying AI capabilities. The study found that the uncertainties caused by the pandemic have forced many organizations to adopt a more committed, disciplined approach to becoming an AI-driven enterprise, with more than half (57%) of the chief data and analytics officers saying that Covid-19 has increased demand for AI, digital products and tools. Enterprises are seeking new AI-driven ways to mitigate risks and navigate through uncharted territories in the current economic environment. The report reveals the central role AI has in shaping the future as global markets work through and begin to recover from Covid-19; as well as how to mitigate future risk and disruption going forward.

Businesses, academia, civil societies, human rights activists, labour movements, non-profit organisations, SMMEs, legal fraternity, women and youth organisations have signed an Expression of Interest (EoI). The EoI provides a platform for cooperation and leverages the collective strengths, insights, knowledge and thought leadership of multiple stakeholders for the realisation of AI benefits. The EoI, signed yesterday at the AI Dialogue South Africa that took place virtually, will promote the responsible use of AI and establish an ethical framework with regulation and standards in mind while allaying many of the fears associated with the technology. "The past few weeks have shown how AI is at risk of being biased and manipulated," says Andile Ngcaba, chairman of Convergence Partners. "Facial recognition has come under fire recently for mass surveillance, racial profiling and violations of basic human rights. Large corporations have also pulled plugs off their facial recognition missions. "These inherent personal and environmental biases need discussion and options need to be considered.

Fujitsu Laboratories has developed what it believes to be the world's first AI technology that accurately captures essential features, including the distribution and probability of high-dimensional data in order to improve the accuracy of AI detection and judgment. High-dimensional data, which includes communications networks access data, types of medical data, and images remain difficult to process due to its complexity, making it a challenge to obtain the characteristics of the target data. Until now, this made it necessary to use techniques to reduce the dimensions of the input data using deep learning, at times causing the AI to make incorrect judgments. Fujitsu has combined deep learning technology with its expertise in image compression technology, cultivated over many years, to develop an AI technology that makes it possible to optimize the processing of high-dimensional data with deep learning technology, and to accurately extract data features. It combines information theory used in image compression with deep learning, optimising the number of dimensions to be reduced in high-dimensional data and the distribution of the data after the dimension reduction by deep learning.

Want your chatbot design to deliver genuine customer engagement? Build it properly, writes Matt Grobler, pre-sales engineer at Inovo. Well, not unless they've been integrated intelligently and strategically to create a seamless customer journey. By 2022, Gartner predicts that 70% of customer interactions with businesses will involve emerging technologies such as machine learning (ML) applications, chatbots and mobile messaging. Chatbots are a bit like magic in that they are powerful tools in the right hands.

Artificial intelligence (AI) experimentation is now prolific across South African companies, with many businesses demonstrating enthusiasm for AI. According to Business Tech (2019), over 45% of South African businesses say that they're already actively piloting AI within their organisations. Metaphorical robots are infiltrating organisations and reinventing business processes due to the rapid rise in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), which has become a readily available solution offered by ICT service providers. A year ago, says 4IR guru Arthur Goldstuck, "only 6% of South African enterprises were using robotics. Then came the RPA explosion. Now the figure stands at 37% (in Engineering News, 2019)."