The Policy Innovation Lab is dedicated to supporting South African policymakers to integrate data and digital tools into policymaking, both to improve policies directly and to better facilitate the policymaking lifecycle. With this in mind, we look for inspiration and new ideas as well as to understand the directions AI technologies may lead society, for better or for worse.

In November 2024, Standard Bank and Mercedes Benz hosted the AI Opportunities Blitz – an event that brought industry leaders together for a one-day facilitated brainstorming session with the mission of identifying different opportunities for AI to drastically improve business and society. Dr Itai Makone and Dr Gray Manicom of the Policy Innovation Lab, and Dr Sunday Oladejo from the School of Data Science and Computational Thinking, took part in the brainstorming process.

At the start of the day the question

“Who needs to be excellent at their jobs for AI opportunities to become reality?”

was asked. The most voted-for answer was Policymakers (see cover image). While you would expect this answer to come from the Policy Innovation Lab, the need for policy expertise in data science was emphasized by fintech, auto industry leaders, IT business owners, developers, and data scientists: people who are heavily invested in the success of AI. Indeed, while participation in the AI Opportunities Blitz implies a belief in the incredible usefulness and power of AI to change lives for the better, there is an acknowledgment that government needs to be involved if this is to be done well and for the benefit of broader society. Digital transformation seems to be inevitable, but its timing and manner are what matters.

The AI Opportunities Blitz continued to develop novel and creative ideas and links between ideas in AI applications for the benefit of society. Through hundreds of sticky notes, facilitators guided participants in a wide range of activities designed to get them thinking outside the box and making new connections between seemingly disparate concepts. By the end of the day, teams pitched their product ideas to the crowd. Product pitches included turning self-driving cars into data collection devices (and car companies into data companies), using AI to monitor and detect water leaks, and using a recommender system to match clients with providers at a small scale within townships.

These activities raise new questions for policymakers and the lab: What are the hard-wired expectations that policymakers have that may need to be broken for AI tools to be most effective? What are those eureka ideas that we are missing for South Africa? Within industry and academia, there is a desire for the Policy Innovation Lab’s mandate to support policymakers with digital transformation and to connect policymakers with data, AI tools, and training to succeed.