What do Stellenbosch's mountains and rivers teach us about AI and policy? Tasked with the challenge of explaining artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to transform policymaking, Stellenbosch 肆客足球's (SU) Policy Innovation Lab looked to nature to make the abstract more relatable.
“At the Policy Innovation Lab at Stellenbosch 肆客足球's School for Data Science and Computational Thinking, we spend a lot of time thinking about how AI can responsibly transform policymaking to improve people's lives. But how do you explain that to people in a way that feels real?" says Prof Willem Fourie, lead of the Policy Innovation Lab. The team turned to videographer and avid mountaineer Philip du Plessis to visualise this impact.
“We gave Philip a formidable creative challenge: to use Stellenbosch's magnificent natural surroundings – the mountains, rivers and indigenous fynbos – to show how concrete the impact of AI is on the world we live in and on people's lives." Before heading outdoors with his camera, Du Plessis recorded hours of conversations with the team, gathering their perspectives on how AI can strengthen policymaking in South Africa.
He then took to the mountains to capture the visuals that would bring those perspectives to life. It helped that Philip is an adventurer who knows the mountains well, quips Fourie. Sweeping footage of rivers, ridges and fynbos became the visual metaphors for AI systems: patterns, flows and ecosystems that adapt and respond to their environment. “The result is a video that goes beyond AI clichés to present a local explainer of how AI can improve policymaking – here in South Africa, and perhaps also far beyond our borders," says Fourie.
Beyond the clichés
The final product avoids the well-worn imagery of robots, data streams, and circuitry often associated with AI. Instead, it presents a distinctly local and nature-inspired explainer anchored in Stellenbosch but with broad relevance.
By using nature as a metaphor, the video makes it easier to see AI not only as an abstract algorithm but as something that, like a river system or a fynbos ecosystem, has real-world impact and interconnections, says Fourie. It also exemplifies the Policy Lab's multidisciplinary approach of combining various disciplines – from data science and governance to storytelling and the arts – to address societal challenges.
- This knowledge product was made possible by the support of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
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