South Africa on Friday unveiled a draft national AI policy, seeking public comment on sweeping proposals to regulate and accelerate AI adoption.<\/p>\n
The \u200bpolicy, published by the Department of Communications and Digital \u200bTechnologies, aims to position South Africa as a continental \u2060leader in AI innovation while addressing ethical, social and \u200beconomic challenges.<\/p>\n
It also marks a significant step in South Africa’s digital \u200btransformation.<\/p>\n
Public comments on the draft policy are invited by June 10.<\/p>\n
The draft outlines plans to establish new institutions, including a National AI Commission, an \u200bAI Ethics Board and an AI Regulatory Authority. The bodies \u200bwould coordinate policy, enforce ethical standards, monitor compliance, and provide mechanisms for \u200credress \u2060and compensation in cases of AI-related harm.<\/p>\n
The government also intends to create incentives such as tax breaks, grants, and subsidies to encourage private-sector collaboration, particularly for local startups and small businesses.<\/p>\n
One \u200bof the key \u200bpillars of \u2060the policy is investment in strong and cost-effective supercomputing infrastructure to support AI research and development. \u200bIt also calls for strategic investments in digital \u200binfrastructure, \u2060including partnerships with international cloud providers and regional supercomputing hubs.<\/p>\n
However, it notes concerns that “reliance on foreign infrastructure could compromise the security \u2060of sensitive \u200bSouth African data.” It calls for \u200bplans to reduce South Africa’s “current hardware dependence on the U.S. and China” amid \u200btheir ongoing geopolitical rivalry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa on Friday unveiled a draft national AI policy, seeking public comment on sweeping proposals to regulate and accelerate AI adoption. The \u200bpolicy, published by the Department of Communications and Digital \u200bTechnologies, aims to position South Africa as a continental \u2060leader in AI innovation while addressing ethical, social and \u200beconomic challenges. It also marks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":20472,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":8,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,1129,30],"tags":[5025,122],"class_list":["post-20471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-security","category-southern-africa","tag-ai-policy","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20473,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20471\/revisions\/20473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}