GMP tasks Muslim on Artificial Intelligence

The Guild of Muslim Professionals (GMP) has charged Muslims to key into Artificial Intelligence (AI) as millions of workers worldwide could be replaced at work by robots.

Speaking during the group’s third yearly youth leadership workshop themed Unleashing your creative potentials, Prof. Abiodun Musa Aibinu noted that an increase in automation will decline employment rate in the sense that monotonous tasks that do not involve much thinking would be replaced with AI.

He said the next revolution is going to be knowledge-base economy opening lot of opportunities
“ With AI, there are guaranteed to be unique jobs created and roles that we’ve never seen before. Every industry is being impacted, it will benefit businesses and equip people to be as educated as possible with regards to understanding AI and machine learning and that will improve operations, marketing, sales, and the overall customer experience.”

He added that replacement of human capacity with machine would allow human to have total control of their time, most especially Muslims.

“Muslims are part of this revolution, the whole idea of creation is to worship Allah, but our daily job is part of the thing that prevent us from worshiping Allah at the right time, but with AI, we have the total control of our time and we can worship God effectively.”

Associate Professor of Pharmacology, University of Lagos College of Medicine and member of GMP Board of Trustees, Dr. Ibrahim Oreagba said the programme is a yearly event dedicated to Muslim youths who are in the health profession. “We found out that there is a gap in terms of mentoring, capacity building and entrepreneurship and we believe sincerely this type of programme will fill those gaps.”

He said the machines, robots are gradually taking over and before we know what is happening, lot of jobs will be lost. “The earlier we face that reality the better and that is one of the objectives of this workshop for people to start thinking critically on how to be relevant in the age of machine.”

He advised participant to learn, unlearn and relearn.

“ We have to learn, unlearn and relearn in order to keep up with the pace at which AI is going. Of course, Islam supports science, the more we make our service efficient, the better for us. Look at the phone, in the past, we have to go to phone boot to make call, but now we all have mobile phones.”

Engr. Faheed Olajide who represented Chairman, GMP Board of Trustees, Alhaji Abdulakeem Oyewale reminisced that Muslims were once leading the world due to their strong attachment to knowledge.

“We are on the threshold of a truly revolutionary era of knowledge where discovery produced creative solution to world problem. Muslims have to take back the leadership they have lost over time by providing solutions, learning, getting more knowledge in order to be able to lead the world into the next century.”

He insisted that no conflict exists in the doctrine of Islam and technology. He explained that the first development in technology that people are using today was actually developed by Muslims.

“When we talk about Algorithm is actually a name that originated from alqahrisim. We’ve books written by Muslims like Ibn Sina that most people refer to Avicenna.

That book was used for 500 years as the main book of medicine to treat people. So, Muslims have been in forefront in the past generation and it wasn’t in conflict with Islam, so, the new generation whatever it is the technology that is happening today can never be in contradiction with Islam.

Islam itself is based on knowledge and this is what we are advocating.”