DEBUNKING THE MYTHS AROUND AI

Every technology moment arrives with a certain amount of theatre. Artificial intelligence (AI) has had more than most. For the past few years, the conversation has been full of bold forecasts about transformation and disruption. Spend enough time around the technology sector, and it can start to feel as if AI has already remade the world. It hasn’t. At least not yet. This issue aims to step away from the spectacle and spend some time on the practical side of the story. What actually happens when organisations try to use AI in their day-to-day operations? What does it look like once the demos end and the work begins?

The answers are rarely glamorous. Deploying AI in the real economy quickly becomes a conversation about infrastructure, power availability and the cost of compute. Questions about where data sits, how systems are governed and who inside the organisation is responsible for them begin to matter more than the model itself. Many companies discover that building a prototype is relatively straightforward. Running it reliably at scale is something else entirely.

Across this issue, we look at the ecosystem that sits behind modern AI. The global race for chips and specialised hardware. The sectors where automation is beginning to produce measurable returns. The operational realities that determine whether ambitious projects survive contact with everyday business environments. There’s also a question that sits close to home.

Where Africa ultimately sits in the emerging intelligence economy will depend on decisions being made now about infrastructure, skills and localisation. The story of AI here will be shaped less by grand predictions and far more by the practical work of building the systems that make it possible.

Happy reading.

Brendon Petersen, Editor

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