REUTERS
IBM is rolling out its Watson supercomputer system across Africa, saying it will help address continental development obstacles as diverse as medical diagnoses, economic data collection and e-commerce research.
The world’s biggest technology service provider, IBM said “Project Lucy” will take 10 years and cost $100 million. The undertaking was named after the earliest known human ancestor fossil, which was found in East Africa.
“I believe it will spur a whole era of innovation for entrepreneurs here,” IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty told delegates at a conference in February 2014.
As an example, Rometty described how Morocco has used sophisticated data mining for “smart agriculture” to improve how crops are grown by predicting weather, demand and disease outbreaks.
The Watson system uses artificial intelligence that can quickly analyze huge amounts of data and understand human language well enough to hold sophisticated conversations. It beat humans on the television quiz show Jeopardy! in 2011.
The technology will enable poorer parts of Africa to leapfrog stages of development they have failed to reach, in much the same way mobile phones took off across the continent in places where there had been no landlines, said Michel Bézy, a Rwanda-based technology professor who helped develop the system.
It could help with education in schools that have few computer resources by using smartphone apps that get access to Watson’s analytical tools through cloud computing, said IBM research scientist Uyi Stewart.
“This is a continent with a tremendous infrastructural deficit, but leveraging data can help you get around it,” Stewart said.
Comments are closed.