Author: The Conversation

When I was growing up, teachers would assign research papers that required going to the library, or later, searching for relevant material on the internet. If the paper was going to turn out well, we students needed to patiently comb through piles of material, weaving what we found into a coherent argument that was well-supported with evidence. Unbeknownst to us at the time, our teachers were giving us a chance to develop our patience. That chance is rapidly disappearing with increased use of artificial intelligence tools. Now you can have an AI do everything from school assignments to legal writing,…

South Africa’s 50 public technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges are, in the main, struggling institutions. In many, throughput rates – how many students qualify in the expected time – are low. Some lecturers are under-qualified and under-resourced. Relationships with employers, which are crucial for the type of training that these colleges offer, are uneven. Colleges are hard-pressed to provide training to young people with weak schooling behind them and no clear path to employment ahead. The youth unemployment rate is almost 44%. The response to problems in the sector has been reform: rename the colleges, restructure them, give them new governance models,…

If you are fortunate enough to have a ticket to an event at Madison Square Garden in New York – say, an NBA Finals game – one aspect of your visit will be having your face scanned by a facial recognition system. Major event venues are increasingly using the technology. Some, like Madison Square Garden, use it for surveillance purposes, and some, like Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, to offer visitors optional ticketless admission. Adoption of facial recognition technology is increasing, becoming more prevalent in daily life, from public buses to public buildings. The Transportation Security Administration has deployed the latest facial recognition technology at security checkpoints at numerous…

A father is worried about his toddler, who has been running a fever for two days and pulling at one ear. A 65-year-old woman has been getting winded on her morning walks and feeling more fatigued than usual. Both reach for their phones and type their symptoms into an AI chatbot. “Your child likely has an ear infection,” the father learns. “Your symptoms could indicate a cardiac condition,” the woman reads. Those are helpful answers – and there’s a good chance they’re correct. Artificial intelligence is approaching, and in some cases exceeding, doctors’ ability to make accurate diagnoses. An April…

One argument often used to quell concerns about the rising energy and resource demand of data centres is that artificial intelligence (AI) models will need less in the future as they improve and become more efficient. But this seemingly logical thinking is a trap, according to a new United Nations report that quantifies the environmental costs of AI. The report estimates that by 2030, AI’s energy use could double to consume 3% of the world’s electricity, produce emissions to equal the UK and deplete more water for cooling than the annual drinking water need of the global population. It also anticipates that…

ChattyBear, a soft, brown-furred teddy bear, begins every conversation with a jubilant, “Hello, my buddy!” No longer the province of the imagination, ChattyBear is part of a new generation of artificial intelligence (AI) toys. It can tell stories, chat about a child’s interests, play games or even discuss what’s happening in the world today. These high-tech toys are powered by generative AI engines such as ChatGPT and are now widely available online. They are being marketed as a way to give children as young as three an educational advantage and a new type of play – without the perils of…

Globally, agriculture faces mounting pressures. These are driven by climate change, land degradation, labour shortages, supply chain disruptions and the demand for food from a growing population. At the same time, productivity is uneven. For example, maize yields in the US often exceed 10 tons per hectare. These high yields are driven by mechanisation, improved seed varieties, irrigation and efficient input use, supported increasingly by precision agriculture technologies. In contrast, yields in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa remain around 2-3 tons per hectare. This reflects constraints like limited access to inputs, reliance on rain-fed systems and weaker infrastructure and institutional support. Smallholder farmers make up around…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming part of everyday newsroom work across Africa. It has entered quietly through routine tasks such as transcription, headline writing, translation and content preparation. In southern Africa, where AI adoption is steadily growing, its application in journalism is raising critical questions from policymakers and governments. While technology offers gains in speed and efficiency, its use remains contested due to ethical concerns and fears about job losses. As communication and media scholars researching data and digital communication, in our study, we examined its influence on production processes, ethical guardrails and job security. Interviews with senior editors revealed that, while AI improves…

A peacock feather in sunlight shifts from blue to green to bronze as you turn it. Photograph it, and this shimmer collapses into one angle, one exposure, one compromise. A digital image is not a record of what your eye sees. The standard color space that most digital images use was built for an older display world, when cathode-ray tube monitors swept beams of electrons across phosphor-coated glass. This standard color space made color predictable across many devices, but the compromise was a narrower range of colors for screens, cameras and image files to share. Whatever the screen offers feels complete. It is not that your eyes…

What happens to language when a growing amount of text published in the press, online and on social media is written by machines? This question is not just important for the profession of journalism – it also has an impact on the richness of the language we all use to comprehend, describe and discuss reality itself. Historically, the press has been a space where public language grows and becomes richer. It is not, of course, the only driver of linguistic change, but it is one of the fields where new or emerging words, turns of phrase and ways of describing facts begin…