Artificial Intelligence has a name. (Just like you).
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The AI market is massive and far exceeds things like Google Assistant, ChatGPT, Alexa and Siri. Have you heard of Alphawatch.ai or AI Green Technology? How about any of these?
- Lensa
- Appy Pie
- Trint
- Bubble
- Ally Financial
- Spinach
- TabNine
- BlueWillow
- ChatFuel
- Fliki
- Icow
- ai
- ClickUp
- Bria
- Github
Every name I have mentioned is an AI program or AI App available today (many on the App stores) and represents only a tiny fraction of those you can use right now.
AlphaGo, Jasper, Llama, DuerOS, Gemini are some of the smartest AIs and I hope every person gets a chance to engage with some of these in the coming years. It is a fact that there are very few people on earth who have not yet used some sort of AI, be it on a smartphone, Spotify, a TV with Netflix or Vodacoms Tobi.
AI means business. AI technologies ‘value’ was around 200 billion USD last year and is expected to reach 1.8 trillion USD by 2030. According to some available reports there are 67200 AI companies already established around the globe. But what about Africa you ask?
Africa is lagging, but not a lot. We have over 2400 AI organisations operating across several industries including law, farming, health and insurance. Intron Health is a good example. (And you have probably never even heard of them?) They are a member of NVIDIA’s Inception programme for start-ups, a Nigerian company that created Africa’s first speech-to-text AI chat tool able to understand 200 African accents.
South Africa has an AI Institute jointly hosted by the University of Johannesburg and the Tshwane University of Technology. Botlhale AI, Prim-U, ARIMMA and Ashanti AI are just a few AIs and businesses already established in South Africa.
Have you ever heard of the DABUS Patent? This is worth some research but in short it relates to patent law by an AI called DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience) that was acknowledged as an inventor for a patent right in South Africa. This decision is the first instance of an AI being granted patent rights in the world.
While on the subject of rights, let’s quickly touch on the subject of AI Law. This topic is of particular interest for me for a number of reasons. One is the jurisdictional challenge that AI presents. Which country’s law do you use when the AI is all over the globe? Another interesting scenario to ponder on is who do you hold accountable or perhaps sue when an AI breaks the law and causes harm? Do you sue the inventor or the AI?
What about content creation rights? Who actually has the rights to income from unique works created by an AI? Should an AI be allowed to earn money? Two years ago Bill Lee (the Governor of Tennessee USA) signed off on legislation to protect songwriters, performers and other music industry professionals against the potential dangers of AI. Why was this law actually needed? Can AI do a better job?