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A 24-year-old entrepreneur, who is hoping to reshape how South African businesses use artificial intelligence, believes AI has the potential to improve business productivity and could be used more widely in the public sector.
Lars Andile Gumede, 24, says the technology could support areas such as procurement oversight, law enforcement and cybersecurity, and South Africa should expand its use of AI to strengthen cybersecurity and protect critical infrastructure as cyber threats become more sophisticated.
“AI should be integrated and used in all areas of government and the public sector, and has been used to great success as I detailed in my article ‘What we can learn from global public sector AI successes’.
“AI should supercharge the efficiency and administration of all government departments as France has done with its public service AI chatbot Albert and as Sweden has done by allowing AI to sort all its emails in its Companies Registration Office,” says Gumede.
Born in Sweden and raised in South Africa, Gumede writes on AI and cybersecurity for newspapers and think-tanks, specifically focused on how South Africa can leverage the AI revolution.
He authored a self-help book called AI Works For You, which teaches how AI can improve one’s everyday life.
Currently NowNow pairs local knowledge with useful real world tool integrations to act as an expert assistant for local business owners
— Lars Andile Gumede, NowNow founder
He is the founder of NowNow (which operates under AXEL), an applied-AI startup that takes global developments in AI and uses them to create useful real world products.
The idea behind NowNow is that top CEOs have armies of assistants, staff, experts, accountants, lawyers, consultants, but small business owners only have themselves.
“NowNow is aiming to use AI to give SMEs the power of large companies, with the goal that eventually an SME can have full-time AI employees and a business that runs on autopilot. Currently NowNow pairs local knowledge with useful real world tool integrations to act as an expert assistant for local business owners,” he says.
He believes that applying AI to support SMEs is by far the best use of AI for the country and the continent, and it is a perfect opportunity for a startup like theirs.
“We now have a first version live with over a thousand users and have signed up many partners to grow the platform,” he says.
One of Gumede’s platform’s tools is Tender Finder, which uses AI to constantly search for tender opportunities for SMEs.
He says the tool broadens access to and the transparency of the public procurement system and it aims to have AI do everything from finding opportunities to applying and submitting bids automatically.
Gumede aims to build a system for government to help deal with their own corruption crisis.
His long-term goal is to build an AI company that develops solutions for South African and African businesses.
Gumede’s company is currently raising funding to expand its platform and develop new AI tools.
“AI must be used for law enforcement, defence and the general support of security in the country. As shown by the Brazil ALICE case study, AI can do fully autonomous investigations.
“In addition, we must use AI to deal with the cybersecurity crisis. In the developed world, some of the largest and most important organisations are their cyber (signals) intelligence services, and they are increasingly using AI and partnering with AI companies,” he says.
He warns that if South Africa does not keep up with global AI developments and properly integrate them to receive their benefits, there may be devastating effects for the country, its prosperity and its global standing.
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