Olalekan Adeyemi is a talented Full Stack Developer with more than a decade of experience developing front-end and back-end applications cutting across various sectors, including Insurance, Human Resource, Logistics, Banking and Media. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer at IDS Africa and Channels Television, with more than a decade of experience building and overseeing scalable media technologies. He is also an associate Android Developer – Java/Kotlin as well as an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. Adeyemi has passion for web and mobile development with skills and abilities in several languages including Javascript, Java, Kotlin, Swift, PHP, HTML and CSS. In this interview with MARIA DIAMOND, the software engineer shares some insights into the nature of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and why it’s important for society to embrace the technology.
Tell us about your experience as a Full Stack Developer and what this profession entails?
A full stack developer works on both front-end and back-end coding languages. As a full stack developer I get to work on the full lifecycle of software products, from scoping, transforming designs to browser-readable formats, plan and design data and business logic as well as deploying to secure and scalable infrastructure.
What motivated you to pursue a career in web and mobile development?
I think I have always had a love for technology. With the release of Web 2.0, I found an outlet through which I could exercise my interests. Over the years, continuous advancement in web technologies and the endless possibilities have motivated me to continue on this journey.
What are some of the front-end and back-end applications you have developed? What were the challenges you faced and how did you overcome them?
I have developed several scalable front and back-end applications cutting across various sectors including human resource, insurance, media and fintech. Some of the solutions include TVNow – a platform delivering live and video on demand to consumers, IDS Fibre – a solution for the delivery of high speed internet services for homes and businesses, payment collection solution for services, amongst others. Creating great user experience at large scale is often an everyday challenge when developing solutions. To overcome this and more, it is important to get architecture right from the start (an example is the choice of micro service architecture over monolithic type systems). This will tend to create an avenue for quick troubleshooting of challenges.
Recently, there have been a lot of discussions around Artificial Intelligence. What are your thoughts on its impact on web and mobile development?
AI is taking centre stage in various industries these days. And it is also transforming web and mobile developments by enabling innovative functionalities, improving user experiences and streamlining development processes. As AI technologies continue to advance, they will likely become more accessible to developers, leading to even more widespread integration and adoption across various web and mobile applications. To continue to benefit from the advancements and possibilities of incorporating AI-driven solutions in mobile, there is a need for developers to continuously improve their skills.
Do you see Artificial Intelligence as a threat to society and media businesses in particular?
AI is not a threat to humans and to media businesses. But the AI tools coming out are going to make humans better and that will have an impact on not only the media, but also all other organisations. For instance, AI tools help to bring out more insight on data sets, leading to better efficiency. For instance, if you want to make predictions about government policy in a feature article, you can make those deductions faster if you have certain AI models. There might be job cuts, but it will certainly make media businesses better, more efficient. And on the editorial side, it can help journalists and editors improve their writing and craft, for example, smarter headlines.
In that vein, how can media businesses take advantage of the Artificial Intelligence trend?
There are many AI tools out there. We have to look at which of them will be best. For instance, some of the plugins built into ChatGPT can write full-blown articles and even reference materials. So media organisations can use some of these AI tools to scale their businesses and even cut costs.
When using Artificial Intelligence, are there ethical considerations?
Of course, there will be certain considerations. AI may not understand certain contexts, so that’s why there is still a need for human input. And, especially for the media business, there are lots of ethics to consider. For example, if you use AI to write a headline about a terrorism story, you still need human editors to make sure it is properly phrased and in the right context. It’s important to consider the ethics of the media space, especially when deploying certain AI tools. But, in general, I think media businesses should embrace AI. Should there be some caution, yes. But overall, it will help their delivery, their business. It could be deployed for editorial and business cases.
As the Chief Technology Officer at IDS Africa and Channels Television, how does your expertise come to play in these organisations?
As CTO at these companies, my focus is using technology for building better products and systems, using technology to drive the change and improve productivity. I lead the technology department that is directly responsible for developing technological processes where I define our technology stack, manage our technical operations, lead and manage teams as well as track performance in teams to ensure productivity and deliver the overarching vision of the companies.
