SA among world’s 4IR leaders but don’t worry, your jobs are safe … for now

One of the general intentions around this year’s edition of the AI Expo Africa 2022 was to alleviate fears that “robots were going to take people’s jobs”.

But despite this common perception among the nation at large, South Africa still dominates as the frontrunners in Africa specialising in AI and the 4IR, holding the number one position as a 4IR leader. This is according to the State of AI in Africa Report 2002.

Dr Nick Bradshaw, African AI Ecosystem Builder and one of the authors on the report, said that South Africa has one of the most developed tech economies and tertiary education systems in the region and work is ongoing towards the creation of a National Strategy on AI via the submission of findings from the Presidential Commission for the 4IR made in January 2020.

SA’s C4IR to harness the pillars of 4IR: AI and IoT

This was also confirmed by Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution of South Africa’s (C4IR) Dr Ntsibane Ntlatlapa.

During his keynote presentation titled “Boosting Industry 5.0 for Small and Medium Enterprises”, Dr Ntlatlapa said that in many ways South Africa was leap-frogging into the future with its adoption of technology, but, in turn, there was now an urgent need for a faster, more agile and more participatory approach to technology governance and adoption.

C4IR South Africa is an initiative of the South African government, acting through the Department of Science and Innovation.

He explained that the C4IR’s mission was to maximise the benefits of technology while minimising the risks for society.

As such, the centre develops and deploys new technologies around AI and IoT in South Africa to improve people’s lives, protect the environment and achieve sustainable growth.

The balance between accelerating digital transformation while regulating it

At present, projects set in place by the country’s C4IR were working to accelerate digital transformation of SMMEs and close the digital divide by maximising the use of IoT technologies.

They were also setting out to use 4IR technologies for the transformation of key productive sectors of the economy, namely manufacturing, energy and mining.

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But while these sectors were exploring the use of robotics in production and processing, the centre was also setting up frameworks for regulation of the 4IR in terms of data, digital identities and artificial intelligence.

So no, robots won’t be taking anyone’s jobs just yet.

This is what for centre works to regulate. It is there to ensure that AI and IoT is used to enhance the sectors of the economy without creating more problems such as unemployment and AI domination, but eliminating menial work without creating a viable alternative for the worker.

That being said, robots in the workspace were not out of the picture altogether.

So how far along are we with these robots in the workspace?

On display at the expo and interacting with all attendees was Spot the agile mobile robot that navigates terrain with unprecedented mobility, allowing one to automate routine inspection tasks and data capture safely, accurately, and frequently. Spot will soon be put to work at the mines in the country, where he will extract value from ‘no-go’ and ‘fly low’ mining areas typical at the majority of narrow reef mining operations in Southern Africa where the use of enterprise drones are limited.

Another interesting session discussing robotics in the workspace was with Nikhil Ranchod, founding CTO of CTRL Robotics South Africa, who threw a light on how robotics was currently being implement in everyday businesses in South Africa, cutting down production/processing times and bettering accuracy rates.

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While he encouraged the general public to not fear the notion of robotics replacing people in carrying out basic tasks in the workforce, he did start off his presentation with a quote by Kevin Kelly (editor of Wired magazine): “You will be paid in the future based on how well you work with robots.”

Ranchod’s case studies have illustrated the successful application of robotics in industries such as hospitality and medical, that point to these industries possibly adopting an automated processing line in the near future.

Solutions for transportation, inspection, cleaning and interaction

Currently, Ranchod’s team provide solutions for uses in transportation, inspection, cleaning and interaction.

“On the transportation side, we do large scale fleet management, route planning and delivery management. On the inspection side, it is automated data collection, remote operation and site inspection. And with cleaning, we do various floor cleans of large-scale warehouses and with this comes scheduling and the logs,” he explained.

Currently, he said, Sky Hotel hosts a number of their first line of robots that assist with concierge.

CTRL Robotics also recently carried out a case study at the Milpark Hospital.

Working off data for Milpark Hospital, from two of its units – the trauma ICU and the cardio thoracic   ICU – the company set out to create robotic solutions to get medicine from the depo (pharmacy) to its patients in the wards as soon as possible. Check out the video below illustrating how CTRL Robotic’s machine manages to deliver the meds in the shortest space of time, even avoiding collisions and crashing into objects.

Human interaction still needed

Ranchod assured that this did not eliminate the porter’s job entirely. In fact, his role was integrated and upgraded into the control and managing of the machine.  

“All the robot did was eliminate the mundane and repetitive task of delivery, freeing up the human to concentrate on more challenging tasks,” he explained.

The Ctrl Robotics site sums it all up with a statement by Mike Walsh: “Robots are not coming for our jobs, they are here to change them.”