Free Webinar
Chatbots by Africans for Africans: An IITPSA SIGAIR Event, 25 November 2021
Chatbots, Conversational AI, Natural Language Processing: It seems that the technology has made exponential advances over recent years. Many of us use this technology daily in the form of Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri and others. The applications in education and healthcare are promising.
A significant challenge with this technology is that almost all platforms are created in northern America or Europe. Indigenous languages are rarely catered for. It is estimated that there are more than 2,000 languages spoken on the African continent. What can we do, and what is being done currently, to address this issue?
Join the IITPSA for a timely and relevant discussion on African language integration in the smart technology era.
Presenters
IITPSA (Tony Parry)
Webinar Host
Dr Vukosi Marivate
UP ABSA Chair of Data Science - University of Pretoria, Co-Founder Deep Learning Indaba. Data Science and Natural Language Processing Researcher. Chief investigator at Masakhane - a grassroots organisation whose mission is to strengthen and spur NLP research in African languages - and joint winner of the inaugural 2021 Wikimedia Foundation Research Award of the Year.
Jade Abbott
Machine Learning Lead at Retro Rabbit. Finalist: Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans. NLP Researcher for African Languages at Masakhane.
Johan Steyn
IITPSA Chair: Special Interest Group – AI & Robotics Johan Steyn is a technologist and management consultant. He is an AI enthusiast and speaks globally at conferences on the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Emerging Technologies.
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