Professor Neil Lawrence was quoted in a recent BBC news article ‘Researchers: Are we on the cusp of an ‘AI winter?’ which explored whether or not the AI industry was cooling off after much hype over the last 10 years. However, he believes that AI is still very much still in the "wonder years". One of the avenues he seeks to explore in his new role is exploring machine learning approaches in Africa, which can have benefits in the developed world as well.
“With data and machine learning, you can have a more advanced data infrastructure in Africa than in some developed countries,” he said. “It’s rare in the UK or Europe that you’re asked to look at a machine learning problem from end to end, but you can do that in Africa, and it leads to better solutions. That’s the kind of approach I want to take to machine learning in my work at Cambridge.”
On his appointment he said “AI and machine learning have the potential to reshape almost every aspect of our lives, but we desperately need more machine learning specialists, or else the promise of AI will not be realised.” DeepMind is an AI research company owned by Google which donated nearly £4m to Cambridge last year to fund this new position and a series of PhD positions and masters places. Could it be that the ‘20s will see a new phase in AI development?
The session will take place at 12.30pm - 1.30pm on Tuesday 21st April. Please sign up to take part! Participants will be sent a link to join via Zoom prior to the start time.
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