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- Herausgeber: Tracey McDonald Publishers
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
'It became apparent to me that, due to the complexity of problems that face humanity today, those who do not know should not lead.' – Professor Tshilidzi Marwala In 2020 the world found itself in a state of flux. A global pandemic disrupted the world order while the digital transformation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), with its challenges and huge potential benefits, presented a fundamental paradigm shift. How are Africa's leaders to respond, today? In a crisis, decisive leadership is imperative for the public good, but as we move beyond the pandemic and confront the changes of the 4IR, we must determine how we will adapt. What is clear is that leadership will have to be grounded in scientific and mathematical thinking and in good governance. It follows, then, that for South Africa to succeed as a nation in the 21st century we must be able to provide our people with an all-embracing education, not just science and technology but human and social sciences as well. Leading in the 21st Century presents a comprehensive overview of how the world is changing and lessons we can draw from leaders, particularly in the African context. From Charlotte Maxeke and the Rain Queen Modjadji, to Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, Eric Molobi and Richard Maponya, there is much to learn from great leaders. The challenges of the 21st century are immense, from climate change to social media and the digital divide that deepens our understanding of inequality, particularly in the 'new normal'. South Africa faces not only a shifting global context but a fraught local context of stagnant growth, rising unemployment and deep-seated inequality, worsened in 2020 by the national lockdown necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic. The 4IR offers solutions to many of our most pressing problems and we cannot afford to be left behind. The certainty is that the 4IR has arrived. The debates lie in how we respond to it. Tshilidzi Marwala deciphers it all, while providing a framework for navigating these shifts. A leading academic of international standing, and Deputy Chair of South Africa's Presidential 4IR Commission, Tshilidzi Marwala provides valuable insights into how leadership should be responding to the digital challenges of the 21st century.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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LEADING IN THE 21st CENTURY
The Call for a New Type of African Leader
TSHILIDZI MARWALA
First published by Tracey McDonald Publishers, 2021
Suite No. 53, Private Bag X903, Bryanston, South Africa, 2021
www.traceymcdonaldpublishers.com
Copyright © Tshilidzi Marwala, 2021
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission from the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-77626-083-6
e-ISBN 978-1-77626-084-3
Text design and typesetting by Patricia Crain, Empressa
Cover design by Tomangopawpadilla
Digital conversion by Wouter Reinders
In memory of my brother Fhatuwani Marwala.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
The 21st century is proving to offer technological advancements at an exponential rate. While the 20th century gave us aviation, nuclear technology, mass production and the electronic era, the 21st century has given us the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).
The 4IR is an era where technologies in the cyber, physical and biological spheres are increasingly converging. Technologies in the cyberspace include artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Although these technologies were invented in the 20th century, they have become more effective in the 21st century. For example, AI was developed in the 1950s, and John McCarthy coined the term. Still, it was only recently when the availability of data became more widespread and computational power increased that it has found complex applications in society, economy and politics. Blockchain technology, on the other hand, was invented in the early 1990s by Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta. The blockchain network stores data across multiple computers, ensuring that the chain won’t collapse because a prospective hacker would have to attack the entire system, across many computers. IoT is an old concept, but the availability of fast internet and advanced sensors have accelerated its applications. Through the IoT, a watch can measure vital aspects of a person and directly inform a doctor if there is anything wrong with the health of the individual concerned.
These developments in the 4IR call for a new type of leader.
Leadership in the 21st Century
It became apparent to me that, due to the complexity of problems that face humanity today, those who do not know should not lead.1 Historically, in South Africa, we have always been led by those who had more knowledge and education. For us to succeed as a nation in the 4IR, we must be able to provide our people with education in its totality. This means that those who are interested in science and technology should also be required to study human and social sciences. Likewise, those who are interested in human and social sciences should also be required to study science and technology.
Why is knowledge a crucial tool for the 4IR? Socially, knowledge liberates us from superstitious thinking and equips us to tackle complex problems. Are our student leaders today receiving education in its totality to enable them to tackle complex problems?
When Deng Xiaoping was changing China after 500 years of lagging behind the West and the humiliation of being invaded by relatively small countries, Japan and Britain, he realised that the centre of his strategy should be education. He advanced what he termed the four modernisations, which were advancement in agriculture, industry and national defence, as well as science and technology. In this regard, he reoriented the Chinese education system to be more international, modern and forward-looking. The results of these reforms have helped China emerge as the most dynamic economy of our time.
Why is this Chinese strategy relevant to South Africa, particularly as we enter the 4IR? It is essential because as we tackle the problems of unemployment, poverty and inequality, economic growth is crucial. It cannot be that the average Australian is ten times richer and better educated than the average South African. As we modernise and reform our agriculture through land reform, we must have sufficient people who are knowledgeable in the political economy of farming to ensure continued food security and global competitiveness. As we tackle the problems of our shrinking industries, we need to understand issues of automation, technology and human capital to improve the quality of life of our people. Any collective knowledge gap in our understanding of technology or global economics, or our knowledge of human capital competency, will derail our ambition of creating a developed society in the 21st century.
Remove Politicism from Leadership
Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister of Ghana, which was the first African country to attain independence, once said: ‘Seek ye first political kingdom, and all else shall be added unto you.’ Thus, he ushered in an Africa where politics became a fashion statement, adored by many and damned by few; a continent that is dominated by politics at the expense of all other vital factors such as the economy and technology.2
Today, some 60-odd years later, the nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of Ghana is $70 billion with a population of 31 million people. Now, compare this to Singapore’s nominal GDP of $392 billion, with a population of 5.7 million people. Singapore is even more prosperous than South Africa, which has a nominal GDP of $370 billion and 60 million people. At the time Nkrumah uttered those words, South Africa and Ghana were much more affluent than Singapore. It seems as though the ‘all else’ that Nkrumah promised did not follow.
The concept of politics dominating all spheres of our lives is called politicism. Because of the shrinking economic activity outside of the government, the South African economy is increasingly becoming centred around the state. If this trend continues, then the South African economy will increasingly shrink, and soon enough the capacity to afford the civil service will be compromised. This is because as the economy shrinks so does the tax base, which is the only source of revenue for the government.
In September 2020, on Twitter, I asked the following question: Is politicism, the belief that politics should be the hegemonic driver of development, compromising our country’s economic, technological and social development? Fifty-one per cent of the 100 respondents answered that, indeed, politicism has a damaging impact on our society, while 25% responded that it is not damaging our society, and 24% did not know how to answer. Though these results are far from being statistically significant, they do indicate that our people are quite keen for South Africa to start being visible in other areas of our society, such as technology and the economy.
Why is politicism not effective? Firstly, because an entity as complex as a nation-state requires multiple skills and capabilities to function. In many countries, the skills of political leadership are one-dimensional, producing people who think and talk alike. Any system, such as a country that is driven by a one-dimensional mindset, will always fail spectacularly. In finance, Harry Markowitz came up with a seemingly obvious concept called portfolio theory. Portfolio theory states that to minimise risk, you need to invest in many assets (a diverse portfolio) as opposed to one. This is akin to an old African proverb that states that ‘two heads are better than one’ in tackling a problem. Markowitz decorated this old idea with fancy mathematical concepts, which saw him win the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Countries that work are those where leadership is distributed across many spheres of society. For a country to work, you need technologists who are operating at the top of their game. The impact of their work should change the lives of a multitude of people.
On 28 August 2020, Elon Musk, the South African born and Silicon Valley-based engineer who founded Tesla, unveiled a device that is inserted into the scalp of a person to read brain activity. The implications of this invention on real-time measuring of sugar levels, early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and brain tumours are significant. What people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are doing is creating a culture of leadership on a substantial scale, influencing people at a considerable level. With politicism, we cannot grow the same technological leadership dimension that we see in the United States and China. This filters into South Africa’s ability to compete globally, resulting in deindustrialisation, job losses and economic contractions.
Another dimension of leadership that we lack as a result of politicism is in the arts. While the arts, whether theatre or painting or sculpting, look non-essential and ‘a nice to have’, they are incredibly crucial for establishing a creative culture that can spill over into technology, economy and society in general. It has been generally believed that leaders such as Steve Jobs were half artists and half technologists. When Jobs founded the company Apple with Steve Wozniak, the latter concentrated on technology while Jobs focused on the design, which requires competence in the arts. In fact, the look and feel aspect of Apple devices defines its products up to this day. This is because technological progress is a faster equaliser than aesthetic characteristics.
Extreme politicism quickly descends into corruption, as is the case in South Africa. If all economic activities around the state shrink, then the clamouring for access to the state becomes hypercompetitive. The fact that many people who gravitate towards the state are regulators or have direct and indirect control of the regulations makes the whole system easily fall prey to manipulation.
In September 2020, I asked the following question on Twitter: Though there are pockets of successes, why has post-colonial Africa mainly been a failure? Of the 707 people who responded 78% thought it was because of corruption, 11% thought it was because of the legacy of apartheid while 7% thought it was because of lack of education, and 4% thought it was because of lack of investment.
Something as complex as the prosperity of nations cannot be explained by just one variable, and indeed it is a combination of many factors. Furthermore, the timing of my question was such that there was plenty of conversation about corruption. Therefore, this could have influenced the outcome of this poll because of the psychological concept called availability bias, when people assume the likelihood of an event based on the ease with which examples come to mind. Corruption suboptimally allocates resources away from the assets that are required for production and economic expansion.
Create a Meritocratic Country
Many people ask a relevant question: if politicism is so bad, how come China is a phenomenal success? Why do the consequences of politicism not apply to China? This is because China has a strong and effective state, which explains the country’s success. Furthermore, China is meticulously selective when choosing its leaders. Many of its leaders are high achievers who were at the top of their class. The culture of studying is embedded in China’s leadership, with many leaders taking time to go and study in what they call party schools as well as in leading international centres. The curriculum in these party schools is astonishingly modern and usually about the economy as well as China’s new ideology, which is based on technology. So, China is more of a meritocracy than a politicised state. As Henry Kissinger noted, China is not just a country but a civilisation.
What now for South Africa? We need to move towards building a meritocratic society rather than a politicised society. We need to invest seriously in education across the board. We need to develop a productive rather than a consumer economy. We need to diversify our leadership in terms of skills, race and gender. It is only through the ‘portfolio of skill sets’ at all levels of leadership in our country that we shall have the necessary capability to lead South Africa efficiently.
This Book
This book tackles the leadership problems of the 21st century. It has 44 chapters that are divided into four sections. The first section deals with the critical leadership issues that a leader in the 21st century must master to tackle the 4IR successfully. These issues include human capital in the areas of AI, blockchain and other disruptive technologies, as well as manufacturing, data, incentives, infrastructure, legislation, state capacity, and security of energy suppliers.
The second section is on the leadership mindset required for successful leadership in the 21st century. The adoption of scientific and mathematical thinking, reading, education, competition, commercialisation, and good governance mindsets are essential.
The third section describes the global trends defining the 21st century, and these include COVID-19, climate change, water, service delivery, local government, commerce, retail, and money.
The fourth section draws lessons from some prominent leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Marie Curie, Eric Molobi, Helen Joseph and Richard Maponya.
PART 1
Key Leadership Issue:Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)
This section describes key leadership issues that need to be addressed for South Africa to thrive in the 21st-century era that is driven by AI. These issues include the 4IR, human capital in the areas of AI, blockchain and other disruptive technologies, manufacturing, data, incentives, 4IR infrastructure as well as legislation, state capacity, and energy supplier Eskom and its maintenance.
CHAPTER 2
FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN SOUTH AFRICA
It is a truism that the 4IR is deeply misunderstood, including its components ranging from robotics, algorithms, simplistic chatbots replacing human beings to data analytics.34 What is required is a deep societal understanding of the pervasive nature of the 4IR that it is not an event with a finite beginning and end but can be seen as a series of fortunate events, with apologies to Lemony Snicket.5
Luddites
Although many remain wary, it is a given that the world as we know it is fundamentally changing. Industrial revolutions have brought with them not only social upheaval but also innovations and change. We have also learned that such revolutions are not neutral. For instance, the first industrial revolution was met with fierce opposition from the Luddites, who were groups of English workers who organised into a form of a union and set out to destroy any machinery they believed would threaten their jobs. In retaliation, many were arrested and executed. Yet, despite the opposition of the Luddites, the first industrial revolution marched on, and the Luddites faded into obscurity. Some have parochial understandings of the 4IR, working on the assumption that it is something that can be averted or avoided. Our very understanding that normalcy in society today is a world which has embraced the revolution has been exposed and interrogated. The fields of commerce, banking, trade and economics have complex interdependencies that are only possible through big data and AI, for instance. (AI is a technique for making machines intelligent.6)
Lagging Behind
On many occasions, we have lagged behind in our ability to adapt and respond to industrial revolutions. South Africa still grapples with this legacy. Yet, unlike the previous industrial revolutions, in the 4IR we cannot afford to be left behind. Our commitment to the 4IR should not be mere rhetoric but rather tangible if we are to realise our economic fortunes. In a country already plagued by the legacy of state capture, with a dwindling economy and mass unemployment, there is much to be gained from the 4IR. It has the potential to counter slow economic growth and low productivity. Importantly, however, South Africa now has to position itself in such a way that we are ready for this transformation. If we don’t, we risk falling even further behind.
4IR Commission
Herein lies the crux of the work of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s 4IR Commission, which was established in 2019 and of which I am deputy chair. The role of this commission is to assist the government in taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the digital industrial revolution. This, of course, requires collaboration between the government, the private sector, the unions, and civil society to be effective.
How do we go about this? The Commission has formulated eight recommendations.
Firstly, the government needs to prioritise a redesign of the human capacity development ecosystem in order to link our entire pool of potential employees into productive and decent work. In order to achieve this, a comprehensive view of the entire human capital system must be developed, and the leverage points which can be accelerated by the 4IR need to be identified.7 This will be facilitated at the Human Resources Development Council, assisted by the 4IR committee and driven by the Digital Skills Forum, which will include timeframes on deliverable objectives. Through the adoption of a skills revolution, both primary and secondary students must, at the least, be equipped with communication (both verbal and written), logical and numerical skills. These skills should feed into the ability to code, think computationally and should have a holistic approach to problem solving. Tertiary education must become multidisciplinary for all students where the curriculum blends science and technology with human and social sciences.
The second recommendation is to develop ‘The National Artificial Intelligence Institute’ which will focus on the application of AI to health, agriculture, finance, mining, manufacturing, and government as well as regulations. It would be responsible for keeping abreast of and support capacity building in Neural Networks, Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision, among others. To spur the industrial and research applications of AI, we need to make high-performance computing available for widespread use. This institute will focus on research and development, as well as implementation capabilities in AI. A mandate to include training will bolster the investment in human capital. In order to achieve this, the government needs to establish the institute within one of its existing structures. Then the business will need to collaborate on implementation of the institute’s programmes while labour unions drive training in AI.
The third recommendation is to establish a platform for advanced manufacturing and new materials. In 2019, manufacturing was South Africa’s fourth-largest industry and contributed 14% to the GDP, making it an important job creator and imperative for the country’s global competitiveness. In the context of the 4IR, nevertheless, it has to be supported by a state-led research initiative, which will grow the sector and develop and apply new materials through the technologies of the 4IR. Similar to the proposed AI institute, this requires collaboration across government, business, labour and civil society.
The fourth recommendation is to secure and make available data to enable innovation. This is critical for building e-government services across sectors such as health, transport and justice. This could be achieved through the creation of the National Data Centre, which consolidates the available computational power. This will become the national data repository for all of our data, including health data. This can be done alongside existing data centre companies.
However, cybersecurity needs to be bolstered in order to safeguard the public. The government already has an existing cybersecurity company called COMSEC, linked to the National Intelligence Agency, which was established in 2003 to secure the government’s communications against any unauthorised access and also from technical, electronic or any other related threats. In order to be competitive in the 4IR, the government will need to strengthen COMSEC’s mandate to include cybersecurity. A cross-departmental Chief Data Officer could facilitate this. The private sector could engage with the government on critical data sets required for innovation and service delivery collaboration and perhaps share their own data sets with the government. Academic institutions will, of course, be an important pillar on data best practices and ethical data sharing.
The fifth recommendation is to incentivise future industries, platforms and applications of 4IR technologies. This means that companies should be incentivised to use 4IR technologies to improve South African competitiveness. These incentives should include tax breaks and support for research and development using organisations such as the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South African National Space Agency (SANSA), National Research Foundation (NRF), Technology Innovation Agency (TIA), Medical Research Council (MRC), and the Agricultural Research Council (ARC). This will support the acquisition and application of advanced technologies in the manufacturing of goods and delivery of services. Part of this will include additional support to develop new Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) and grow existing ones in the 4IR space to develop solutions that ultimately address South Africa’s development challenges. To achieve this, the ease of doing business needs to be improved, including such tasks as registering patents, reducing the cost of 4IR businesses with regard to customs duties and taxes and enabling ease of global competitiveness and expansion. The government will need to establish appropriate incentives while remaining cognisant of the country’s precarious fiscal position.
The sixth recommendation is to build 4IR infrastructure, which integrates with existing economic and social infrastructure. We need to evaluate the generation and distribution of energy, the extension and improvement of water infrastructure as well as health and educational infrastructure to create a coherent and comprehensive infrastructure network. The first step will be for the government to develop an extensive set of infrastructure priorities for the country with attainable goals. In 2012, the government adopted the National Infrastructure Plan as a job creator and to strengthen the delivery of basic services.8 However, much of this needs to be done with urgency as infrastructure is integral to the 4IR. Businesses can play a pivotal role in engaging with the government on infrastructure projects that can be tested and scaled. At the same time, labour unions can facilitate any negotiation deadlocks that prevent timeous project roll out.
The seventh recommendation is to review, amend or create policy and legislation. To ensure our legislation is in line with the 4IR, parliament should look at all our legislation and update it accordingly. This will require the legislature and state executives to be trained to become 4IR and science-literate to be able to implement changes. In particular, the generation of intellectual property rights stands out in this context, as the principle of a creative and knowledge economy implies the rapid production of new technologies, artefacts and processes for commercialisation and scale. This will include relooking at our tax laws so that they bring platform companies such as Uber and Airbnb into our tax regime.
The eighth and final recommendation is to establish a 4IR strategy implementation coordination council, which will coordinate government departments responsible for 4IR related programmes. In addition to this, the council will coordinate initiatives across the public and private sectors, labour and academia. This will require resourcing and budget allocation aligned to the mandate to ensure that there is a single point of coordination with government departments for the council.
Conclusion
This, of course, needs to be achieved against the context of a weak fiscal position. Growth has remained below the government’s target in the National Development Plan, which serves as the country’s economic blueprint, consistently since the 2008 global financial crisis. Unfortunately, this limits the state’s capacity to directly invest in and take ownership of the industries it may choose to support. Collaboration across the public and private spheres could, however, be the answer, but the state will need to leverage and build on its relationships. It is important to note that while this will be led and regulated by the government, it is not solely a government programme. As the Nigerian poet Ben Okri once said, ‘We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a redefinition of our destination.’9
CHAPTER 3
BUILDING HUMAN CAPITAL
China is on its way to becoming the first AI superpower.1011 This is according to Forbes magazine, which found that by January 2020, while over 20 nations already had AI strategies in place, China was by far the most ambitious of the lot. With South Africa’s strategy finalised in 2020, there are some crucial aspects where the country needs to play catch-up. Where China has already looked at the provision of legal frameworks, resources and goals coupled with local freedom to adapt, South Africa has just completed the nascent process of strategising. For us, the task is urgent, particularly when you consider that by 2025 China expects to have already implemented its strategy.
Why is this so important? The 4IR, predicated mainly on AI, is an era when intelligent technologies permeate all aspects of our lives – be it in the economy, society or in politics – which is envisioned to grow economies exponentially and could be the key to finding solutions to some of our most deep-seated problems. Consider, for example, the McKinsey Global Institute Report on the impact of AI on the world economy, which found that there is the potential to incrementally add 16% or around $13 trillion to current global economic output by 2030 – an annual average contribution to productivity growth of about 1.2% throughout the next decade.12 It is no wonder then that so many nations have prioritised creating AI strategies.
South Africa has made some headway, but we are still playing a fierce game of catch-up. In 2019, President Cyril Ramaphosa established the Presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution (PC4IR). We were tasked with the responsibility of putting together a plan that will ensure that South Africa takes advantage of the opportunities presented by the digital industrial revolution.
Human Capital
The first recommendation to be unpacked is an investment in human capital. This is only logical when one considers South Africa’s rising unemployment rate, coupled with the brain drain we have experienced in the last few years. The latest statistics, indicative of the first half of 2020, show that unemployment is above the 30% mark. This does not even encompass our discouraged workers, which puts the estimate closer to the 40% mark. Then, of course, there is the issue of emigration of highly skilled workers, which Statistics South Africa estimates to have been around 97 460 in the years 2006 to 2016 – a figure many have called a gross under-representation. The solution is not only to foster growth to propel a stagnant economy but to create a coherent strategy from stakeholders in the business, labour, government and civil society sectors.
This will not be an easy task, particularly when one considers that the focus needs to be on both lowering the unemployment rate as well as preparing the current workforce for changes brought about by the 4IR. South Africa is one of the countries that is most vulnerable to 4IR disruptions. Consider, for example, that the 2018 Human Capital Index (HCI) figures from the World Bank (which measures how countries mobilise the economic and professional potential of its citizens) showed that South Africa’s HCI is just over 0.4. This is the same as that for Benin and Malawi. However, South Africa has a larger GDP per capita and is categorised as upper middle income, while Benin and Malawi are in the low-income group. What this means is that while South Africa has many economic opportunities, the majority of its citizens are not equipped to take full advantage of them.
Skills
In the 4IR, there must be a mixture of skills stacked upon each other that are aligned to industry. This should allow people to enter and leave the system at numerous points as part of a lifelong learning process. We need to invest in projects for mass skills development which can be scaled for exponential skills pipeline development and market absorption. This could be particularly effective in the manufacturing, agricultural and tourism sectors, which provide direct opportunities for such programmes.
As a matter of national culture, all aspects of society must be prepared to reskill and to approach skilling as a continuous process. Our education system at all levels must promote problem-solving skills, computational thinking, multidisciplinary skills, systems thinking as well as mastering the social, economic and political worlds.
Implementing Human Capacity Development
How do we go about this?
To recap: Firstly, the government needs to prioritise a redesign of the human capacity development ecosystem to link our entire pool of potential employees into productive and decent work. To achieve this, a comprehensive view of the whole human capital system must be developed, and the leverage points which can be accelerated by 4IR need to be identified. This will be facilitated at the Human Resources Development Council, assisted by the 4IR committee and driven by the Digital Skills Forum, and will include a timeframe on deliverable objectives.
Secondly, the private sector, made up of both large businesses and SMMEs, needs to outline what skills are required and collaborate on strategic projects for mass skills development linked to various industries.
Thirdly, labour unions need to review their role in light of the 4IR and recommend appropriate worker protections. Implementation of these protections will have to be done in collaboration with the government.
Fourthly and finally, academic institutions ranging from schools to universities to Technical and Vocational Education and Training colleges need to review their curricula with a focus on the 4IR to ensure the relevance of qualifications based on requisite skills and the principle of lifelong learning. For instance, schools should promote digital literacy, while every effort should be made to attract students to science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) subjects. This, of course, cannot happen in silos but requires a concerted effort across the board. If we are to begin to solve our burgeoning unemployment crisis, this is the first step.
CHAPTER 4
BUILDING THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE INSTITUTE
In 2020, Katerina Tikhonova, the daughter of Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, was appointed to head the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Institute, which is located at the famous Moscow State University (MSU).1314 MSU has produced 13 Nobel Laureates, six Fields Medals and one Turing Award; so in matters of science, putting the Russian AI Institute there is a big deal. In Russian, if a husband’s last name is, for instance, Komlev, the wife’s surname becomes Komleva. Thinking algorithmically, you add an ‘a’ at the end of the husband’s or the father’s last name to get the wife’s or the daughter’s last name, respectively. So Katerina’s surname is Tikhonova, meaning that her husband’s or one of her paternal ancestor’s last name was Tikhonov.
Ill-posed Problems and the Pope
Why is Tichonov such an essential name in AI? AI models are ill-posed. To understand ill-posed models requires us to understand well-posed problems. Well-posed problems have a solution, which is unique, whereas ill-posed problems do not have a unique solution. A unique solution means that there is only one solution rather than multiple but confusing solutions. For AI models to have unique solutions, one has to regularise these models using the Tikhonov regularisation approach.
Regularisation is the process of including additional or prior information to a model. Andrey Tikhonov was a larger-than-life Russian mathematician and geophysicist who applied this regularisation approach to make unworkable AI models workable.15 Even though Andrey Tikhonov is not Katerina’s husband and her last name is adopted from her great-grandfather, the choice of making her head of the AI Institute, although a coincidence of surname, is significant. She is a rocket scientist with an impressive doctorate in analytical mechanics.
