Time said on Rosman: "He is tired of being asked about the 'African angle' on artificial intelligence. That's not because he has nothing to say - a professor of computer science and applied maths at Wits University in South Africa, Rosman co-founded both the Deep Learning Indaba , an annual gathering for Africa's AI community, and Lelapa AI , a company developing AI for African languages - but because he rejects the assumption that Africa can only contribute to the field by building applications or contributing data. 'It's like, screw you,' he says. 'What's the unique American angle on AI?'"
Speaking to TechCentral in an interview on Tuesday, Rosman said South Africa is in a unique position in that it can play on a par with other leading nations in the development of artificial intelligence while also helping shape the technology's direction.
"It is not clear that the right thing to do is to take someone else's technology, build a layer on top of it that does the adaptation, and then use it like that," said Rosman. "In many cases, we want it built to purpose from the ground up. If there are problems, we need people to understand why things aren't working, why they are working when they do, or when it is appropriate to use certain tools and not others."