But what exactly are AI skills?
See, there’s a risk of framing this for an amorphous concept, which — let’s not kid ourselves — AI is. Distractive!

Can we please focus policy efforts in making higher learning institutions capable of producing well rounded individuals?

🪘The call for practicals proposals 💻 is open until the 12th of May! 🪘

The practicals seek to build fundamental skills and foundational theory for deep learning and its applications.
You are invited to submit a proposal for an application-based practical in 2024 here👉

Get ready for the launch of our Vulavula API.🎊 It's multilingual, user-friendly, and proudly African.

For now, make sure to apply for our exclusive hackathon to be among the first to explore its features and win prizes!

Apply now: bit.ly/VHack

#VulavulaHack

It is normal for IEC South Africa to meet with diplomats. They have already engaged EU diplomats & will meet the Dean of African Diplomats. DIRCO South Africa is convening a meeting of the Diplomatic Corps for a briefing by the #IEC on the state of readiness for 29 May elections (standard

For me the funniest comment today was a complaint that the IEC had a *secret* meeting with the United States Ambassador that he has posted on social media.

A true giant has fallen. An inspiring hero to many of us, Ntate Sam Motsuenyane, invested his lifetime uplifting and teaching that self-sufficiency and integrity were core values for success. We were truly blessed to walk and work with him. #RIPMotsuenyane

Rest in eternal Power ✊🏾

🎉 Big news, Pythonistas! 🐍

We've got some updates: #PyConAfrica is back, and we're kicking off in Accra again before heading south to South Africa in 2025 and then catching the beat in Uganda in 2026! Let's gear up for a Pythonic journey like no other!

#PyConAfrica 2024

Last comment on this because I could really go all day and I have to focus on actual, real research.

Just go to 1:29 where he talks about what Extropic is.

“We are adding generative AI to electrons at low temperatures…pushing the bounds of physics via packing in AI”

Really?

Things go horribly wrong when authors have contracted with Elsevier to deliver a book on tidal energy and don't have time to notice that the sources of their plagiarism are writing non-literally.
pubpeer.com/publications/E…
worldenergy.org/assets/downloa…

📣📣📣 Just a friendly reminder: The deadline for submitting your workshop proposal to the Deep Learning Indaba 2024 is only 2 days away! Make sure to get your proposal in on time!

Very important this bit...

'Finally, as people who have been fortunate enough to benefit from this democracy, we need to locate our role in building this country because it is in all our best interests for South Africa to work for all!'

This is just outrageous. The SABC News Board needs to come out and support the head of news. It’s an egregious effort to undermine editorial independence. City Press News24 🇿🇦 SANEF Media Matters SOS Coalition

We are sharing this Rutgers Today story featuring our Computer Science Prof. Jie Gao and Vukosi Marivate, Computer Science alumnus that discusses the need of AI to address critical needs in the world. Full story here: rutgers.edu/news/ways-rutg…
#rutgerssas mps #rutgerssas Rutgers Computer Science Department

Happy 30th to the swaggiest nation ♥️🇿🇦

Happy #FreedomDaySA !
My 1st ever interview with #NelsonMandela in at his home in Soweto after his 1991 US tour where he called on South Africans living abroad to come back home to serve. During this interview, I pledged my commitment to come back & Nov 1992 launched #FeliciaShow

A friend of mine finishing his master Université Paris-Saclay is looking for a PhD position in multilingual NLP for low-resource. He’s currently working on RLHF & synthetic datasets creation (previously worked on culture-aware LLMs). Please reach out if you’ve any, share and retweet!

My favourite 'typical-South African' 27 April 1994 story:

South Africans in New Zealand were the first to vote. And, Dr Nomaza Paintin-Mandela was the first South African to vote.
She claimed to be Nelson's niece.

She was neither a doctor, a Mandela, or even South African.

IPSOS has a new poll out! Their first one with MK in it.

ANC 40% (-18)
DA 22% (+1)
EFF 12% (+1)
MK 8% (+8)
IFP 4% (+1)
ActionSA 3% (+3)
FF+ 2% (-)
Others 8% (+4)

Swings compared to 2019. ANC even lower than previous IPSOS polls. It's the first time I've ever seen ANC numbers