ARTIFCIAL INTELLIGENCE LAB IN GHANA

Ghana has launched an initiative to set up a laboratory in Artificial Intelligence Laboratory following collaboration between the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE) and the EU Pascal-2 Network of Excellence represented by the Jozef Stefan Institute (JSI).

The partnership is to enhance learning and research in artificial intelligence.

The laboratory will focus on research in the field of robotics, natural language processing, machine learning, neural networks among others.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a computer application system which empowers machines to mimic the actions and behaviours of human beings.

Being the first of its kind in Ghana, the main idea behind the establishment of the laboratory is to provide a hands-on experience for students in the various tertiary institutions offering courses in this area of study.

The main purpose of the laboratory will be to provide support and enhance the learning skills as well as the professional development of students, lecturers and anyone interested in the field of artificial intelligence.

The Pascal-2 Network of Excellence will be conducting a series of boot camps on AI research areas. Five scholarships have already been offered to the universities in Ghana to enable them to participate in a boot camp to take place in Marseille, France in July 2010.

The artificial intelligence equipment

The research area to be addressed is machine learning which is an exciting field of study under AI where researchers search for and describe patterns based on a given set of data, in the hope that this would help them make better forecasts.

The boot camp would be facilitated by seasoned researchers affiliated to Pascal 2 Network of Excellence in Europe.

Recorded versions of the camp will form part of video lectures also sponsored by the network.

These will be made available online at videolectures.net website.

The Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence in ICT is committed to ensure that this laboratory serves as a hub for learning and also for innovative research work in the field of artificial intelligence.

STORY: SAMUEL KOFI AMPAH