In this seminar, Dr Marivate will cover what is Artificial Intelligence, where it has come from, how it augments our lives and why society has to be part of the conversation. In his work as a Data Scientist, he uses Artificial Intelligence, specifically a subset Machine Learning to learn patterns from data. Most of this data that he uses if from text. Text data is abundant but at the same time scarce, especially for languages that are underrepresented or from areas where it has been hard to formally collect data, even though a language is widely used. As such, building decision-making models with this data has to be careful as not to discriminate. The same can be said in general when we use Data Science for Society. Data is ultimately about people: how do we make sure that we represent our values and understand that data is not biased while providing decision-making tools for society?

Vukosi Marivate holds a PhD in Computer Science (Rutgers University) and MSc & BSc in Electrical Engineering (Wits University). He is based at the University of Pretoria as the ABSA Chair of Data Science. Vukosi works on developing Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence methods to extract insights from data. A large part of his work over the last few years has been in the intersection of Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing (due to the abundance of text data and need to extract insights). As part of his vision for the ABSA Data Science chair, Vukosi is interested in Data Science for Social Impact, using local challenges as a springboard for research. In this area, Vukosi has worked on projects in science, energy, public safety and utilities. Vukosi is an organiser of the Deep Learning Indaba, the largest Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence workshop on the African continent, aiming to strengthen African Machine Learning. He is passionate about developing young talent, supervising MSc and PhD students and mentoring budding Data Scientists.

URL to Professional page and research information: http://www.vima.co.za/.

DATE Tuesday, 13 August 2019
TIME 11:00 to 12:30
VENUE Old College House Seminar Lounge, 1-09, University of Pretoria
RSVP Kirsty Nepomuceno, 012 420 2653, [email protected]