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By Faizel Patel

Senior Journalist


WATCH: ‘Gen AI solves problems that were too expensive to solve’ – Cyborg Anthropologist

Gen AI has the potential to provide healthcare for everyone or a tutor for every child or student or access to information in every language


MJ Petroni, a cyborg anthropologist and futurist at Causeit said generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) allows people to solve problems.

Petroni, who hails from the US, was the keynote speaker at the Dell Technologies Forum at the Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit.

Watch MJ Petroni speak about Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI)

Gen AI

The forum brought together hundreds of IT enthusiasts, executive business leaders, and industry at the event, which also featured three Springboks players—Mazazole Mapimpi, Jesse Kriel, and Malcolm Marx—with former player John Smit facilitating the session.

Petroni said Gen AI can play a critical role in society.

“It allows us to solve problems that previously we were told are too expensive to solve. So, whether that’s providing healthcare for everyone or a tutor for every child or student or access to information in every language, we can now do that.”

ALSO READ: WATCH #DellTechForum: ‘AI has potential to transform industries’ – Dell

What is a digital human?

During the tech forum, Dell also introduced Clara, a “digital human.”

Petroni said the concept of “digital human” is more than just a science fiction concept.

“So, what we are actually talking about when we [talk about] digital humans is more like a machine character or avatar. It’s a human-like representation of a machine system that bridges that gap between how we think and how the machine thinks.

“That bridge between is the point of interface when kind of being touches another, whether it’s us touching the screen of our phones or us talking to AI. It prompts really important questions about what is it to be human and what is it be a machine and how we need to adapt ourselves to be able to work in these systems,” Petroni said.

Google Gen AI

With new breakthroughs in Gen AI, Google last week rolled out its Search Generative Experience (SGE) in sub-Saharan Africa as an opt-in experiment in Search Labs.

This AI-powered experience, which is available in English, will expand to new locations and several Spanish-speaking nations, including those in the US.

Simply put, SGE is a new generative AI experience in Search to help you get even more from a single search.

ALSO READ: Google rolls out generative AI to Search in Africa

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