Artificial Intelligence (AI) already shapes our everyday lives and has the enormous potential to both solve complex industrial and social problems and create new and innovative products and solutions. However, many organisations are still grappling to understand the relevance and future impact of AI on their activities, and what they should be doing about it. This is one of the pressing issues to be addressed by the new Master's degree in AI, to be offered by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cape Town from 2022.

The new degree will complement the current Master's in Computer Science by introducing students to a broad base of AI and Machine Learning (ML) techniques, ranging from classical logic and ontologies to statistical approaches, biologically inspired AI, and natural language processing.

The degree will offer an array of modules on various AI topics, as well as a dissertation component, enabling students to immerse themselves in a specific AI research topic under the supervision of one of UCT's AI experts in the Computer Science department.

This specialisation in AI further aims to provide practical training in doing scientific research that makes substantial and significant research contributions, as well as building theoretical knowledge on a broad range of topics in AI, and solving critical research problems that contribute to, and advance the state of the art in the overall field of AI.

The University of Cape Town is one of only a few tertiary institutions in South Africa that offers a Master's degree in AI with coursework and a dissertation component.

Applications for 2022 are now open and will close on 30 September 2021. Further information about the degree and application procedure is available at: http://www.sit.uct.ac.za/sit/postgrad/masters-ai