Machine Learning

The Stochastic Parrot in the Coal Mine: Model Collapse is a Threat to Low-Resource Communities

Model collapse, the degradation in performance that arises when generative models are trained on the outputs of prior models, has …

Devon Jarvis, Richard Klein, Benjamin Rosman, Steven James, Stefano Sarao Mannelli

Old Problems, New Tools: AI in the Cradle of Humankind

A talk on applying AI to data from the Cradle of Humankind, given at the Entropy Symposium at the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival.

1 Nov 2025 Tshimologong Precinct

Building an AI-Ready Workforce: What Should IT Teams Learn?

A talk on what skills IT teams need to work effectively with AI and ML tools, given at IT Indaba’s inaugural South African edition.

21 Oct 2025 Sandton Convention Centre

Old Problems, New Tools: Machine Learning in the Sterkfontein Caves

A public lecture on applying machine learning to data from the Sterkfontein Caves, part of the Cradle of Humankind.

25 Apr 2025 Wits Anglo American Digital Dome

Old Problems, New Tools: Machine Learning in the Sterkfontein Caves

A talk on applying machine learning to data from the Sterkfontein Caves, part of the Cradle of Humankind, given at ICRA@40 Africa.

24 Sep 2024 University of the Witwatersrand

Panel Discussion: Current and Future Research in Machine Learning

A panel discussion on current and future directions in machine learning research, given online to the IndabaX Namibia community.

1 Oct 2021 Online

If Dropout Limits Trainable Depth, Does Critical Initialisation Still Matter? A Large-scale Statistical Analysis on ReLU Networks

Recent work in signal propagation theory has shown that dropout limits the depth to which information can propagate through a neural …

Arnu Pretorius, Elan Van Biljon, Benjamin Van Niekerk, Ryan Eloff, Matthew Reynard, Steven James, Benjamin Rosman, Herman Kamper, Steve Kroon