South Africa needs an agile, enabling, and proactive National AI policy grounded in our realistic context so its statements are actionable. Our policy should clearly outline, at a high level, how South Africa aims to capture AI’s benefits while effectively managing the risks it poses. We can achieve that outcome through collective effort.
Request access and suggest changes to the policy
We invite you to read and share the policy, and to suggest changes. Thank you for your contributions! Request access to suggest changes.
Let’s start with outcomes, and let AI enable us to achieve them
Yes, we are not at the frontier of AI, but that doesn’t mean we cannot benefit from the technology. Faraday pioneered the foundational science of electricity in England, but America benefited the most because it built out electricity infrastructure and identified the right use cases for productivity gains. So South Africa doesn’t have to be at the frontier, we just need to be clear about how AI can help us achieve our outcomes.
What is Government Policy anyway?
Government policy is a set of instructions a government (or political party) uses to help people make decisions and manage different situations. It is our plan, our strategy.
Too many instructions lead to inaction.
South Africa’s National AI policy
We urgently need policy. It is currently taking too long to develop. South Africa has no time to lose.
The policy cannot be everything, everywhere, all at once. We need to identify at most five outcomes where we can act to achieve economic, social, governance, and infrastructure goals. We have to make choices. South Africans should know and act on it.
In the era of AI, where words are plentiful and cheap, the policy should be plain and simple so anyone can understand it. The policy should be agile so that it can change as the world changes. The policy must not be too long – it should fit on one page, the details can go in other documents.
It is easy to talk about policy, the hard part is putting it plainly in writing.
We know about practical, actionable policies, codes and laws
Members of the Michalsons team continuously contribute where data, tech, and law intersect. We have participated in public policy development and law reform. We helped shape legislation such as the ECT Act, POPIA, and the Cybercrimes Act, and we turn complex legal and policy issues into practical action. Team members have also served on the South African Law Reform Commission (SALRC) and helped develop the King Code. We want to keep helping bring the South African legal system into the digital era and collaborate to enable practical governance.
Let’s work together to develop South Africa’s National AI policy
For the policy to succeed, South Africans should feel it is our policy.
If anything is worth building, it’s worth building together. South Africa needs a policy, and we should all work toward one we can be proud of. We have a first draft. You can leave short comments, but we encourage you to suggest changes so we can build it together instead. The only rule is that it can’t be longer than one page.
