The Transform Africa Summit is the Smart Africa flagship event. Following four successful editions, the fifth Summit will take place at Kigali Convention Center, Rwanda from 14 to 17 May 2019.
Under the theme “Boosting Africa’s Digital Economy”, the Summit is expected to attract over 4,000 participants, including Heads of State and Government, First Ladies, UN Broadband Commissioners, Ministers, Regulators, Mayors and Governors, Public and Private Sector, International Organizations, Industry Leaders, Investors, Entrepreneurs, Young Innovators, Civil Society and Academia.
In addition to the Smart Africa Leaders Summit, the Smart Africa Women’s Summit and interactive plenaries, the summit will feature subject specific streams tackling current ICT topics. Delegates will be able to attend insightful and engaging streams including Hubs as well as several customized sessions by our partners.
As he unveiled Transform Africa Summit 2019 activities in October 9, 2018, the Executive Director of Smart Africa Alliance that partners with Rwanda to organize the Summit said the fifth edition of the Summit will focus on Africa’s digital-driven economy.
Dr. Hamadun Toure said digital innovations by Africans are a pillar of Africa’s digital-driven economy and will be showcased and sponsored so that they play a role in creating new jobs for the youth.
The presence of Sophia in Kigali will be an opportunity to interact with the humanoid robot for participants of the summit and learn from advanced technologies in artificial intelligence.
Different reports indicate that Sophia is a social humanoid robot developed by Hong Kong-based company ‘Hanson Robotics’. Sophia was activated on February 14, 2016, and made its first public appearance in mid-March 2016 in Austin, Texas, United States. It is able to display more than 50 facial expressions.
Sophia has been covered by media around the globe including CNBC, Forbes, Mashable, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian among others and has participated in many high-profile interviews.
In October 2017, Sophia became the first robot to receive citizenship of any country.
The robot was granted Saudi Arabian citizenship, becoming the first robot ever to have a nationality. This attracted controversy as some commentators wondered if this implied that Sophia could vote or marry, or whether a deliberate system shutdown could be considered murder.
Social media users used Sophia’s citizenship to criticize Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. In December 2017, Sophia’s creator David Hanson said in an interview that Sophia would use her citizenship to advocate for women’s rights in her new country of citizenship; Newsweek criticized that “What [Hanson] means, exactly, is unclear”.
On November 27, 2018, Sophia was given a visa by Azerbaijan while attending Global Influencer Day Congress held in Baku. December 15, 2018, Sophia was appointed a Belt and Road Innovative Technology Ambassador by China’
Experts who reviewed the robot’s open-source code stated that Sophia is best categorized as a chatbot with a face. Many experts in the Artificial Intelligence field disapprove of Sophia’s overstated presentation. However; Ben Goertzel, the chief scientist for the company that made Sophia, acknowledged that it is “not ideal” that some think of Sophia as having human-equivalent intelligence, that Sophia’s presentation conveys something unique to audiences.
In November 2017, Sophia was named the United Nations Development Programme’s first-ever Innovation Champion and is the first non-human to be given any United Nations title. As part of its role, Sophia will help to unlock innovation to work toward achieving the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. On stage, it was assigned its first task by UNDP Asia Pacific Chief of Policy and Program, Jaco Cilliers.
In January 2018, Facebook’s director of artificial intelligence, Yann LeCun, tweeted that Sophia was “complete bullshit” and slammed the media for giving coverage to “Potemkin AI”. In response, Goertzel stated that he had never pretended Sophia was close to human-level intelligence.
Sophia is known for human-like appearance and behavior compared to previous robotic variants.
According to the manufacturer, David Hanson, Sophia uses artificial intelligence, visual data processing, and facial recognition. Sophia also imitates human gestures and facial expressions and is able to answer certain questions and to make simple conversations on predefined topics. It uses voice recognition (speech-to-text) technology from Alphabet Inc. (parent company of Google) and is designed to get smarter over time.
Sophia’s intelligence software is designed by Hanson Robotics. The Artificial Intelligence program analyses conversations and extracts data that allows it to improve responses in the future.
Hanson designed Sophia to be a suitable companion for the elderly at nursing homes or to help crowds at large events or parks hoping that the robot can ultimately interact with other humans sufficiently to gain social skills.
Sophia has nine robot humanoid “siblings” who were also created by Hanson Robotics. Fellow Hanson robots are Alice, Albert Einstein Hubo, BINA48, Han, Jules, Professor Einstein, Philip K. Dick Android, Zeno, and Joey Chaos.
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