A lecturer at the University of Cape Coast‘s Department of Mathematics has been awarded a $30,000 Google research grant to continue artificial intelligence research (AI).
Dr. Stephen Moore, who is also a co-founder of Ghana Natural Language Processing (Ghana NLP), received the honor in order to accelerate the study of natural language processing (NLP) in African and Ghanaian languages with little resources.
The goal of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) subfield known as Natural Language Processing is to enable computers to process languages similarly to humans.
Since 2020, Dr. Moore and his colleagues at Ghana NLP have been creating translation tools for low-resource languages like Twi, Dagbani, Ewe, Ga, Guruni, Igbo, etc. for both text and speech.
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Dr. Moore highlighted the current state of NLP development in Ghana and the opportunities the nation would benefit by preparing and developing young people for the future during the reopening of Google’s new office in Accra, Ghana, in 2022.
He introduced Khaya, the first Ghanaian language translator that Ghana NLP had launched alongside Algorine (a partner company of Ghana NLP).
The application aims to develop a unified translator for a number of African languages using cutting-edge NLP language models.
Google gave the present in appreciation for Ghana NLP’s efforts in both the creation of such crucial tools and the instruction of Ghana NLP volunteers.
A social venture called Ghana NLP strives to increase Ghanaians’ access to NLP through training, workshops, and seminars. It is the first time Google has given one of these awards to a researcher from Ghana.
Source: Myjoyonline
