Founder, Hyperspace and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NeuRaL AI, Dr Oluseyi Akindeinde, has assured that artificial intelligence (AI) will create jobs for Nigerians but stressed the need for knowledge upskilling to meet its demand.
    
Speaking in Lagos at the Nigeria Information Technology Reporters Association (NITRA) organised forum with the theme: “Impact of AI on National Development: Prospects, Policies, and Challenges in Nigeria,” Akindehinde, asserted that upskilling is a crucial requirement for sustainable AI adoption in Nigeria.
    
To discuss the topic, Akindeinde started with the challenges facing AI adoption in Nigeria which includes a phobia that it would disrupt and sack people from their jobs. He assured Nigerians that AI would not take their jobs, maintaining that the problem with Nigerians is that there is always fear whenever a piece of technology is introduced in the country. 
   
“Any time there is a new technology, there is that phobia, there is that fear that it is going to be disruptive, yes it is disruptive but when a piece of technology is disruptive that means it can do things cheaper, faster and better. But some of the challenges are based on the assumption that AI is going to take our jobs, and because it is going to take our jobs, the first thing is to push it back and not allow it.
   
“I am here to assure you that AI is not going to take anybody’s job, it is the same thing about 25 years ago when we started hearing about the Internet, even journalists felt at the time, are we still going to have newspaper, anybody can just go online and have a blog and start reporting, you know, are we still going to have TV since somebody would go on Youtube and upload a video.

And if you look back you recall how information was consumed back then, when something happened you probably wouldn’t hear about that event until, maybe, 7 o’clock news or 9 o’clock news or the following day when the newspapers will report it, but when the Internet came, it democratised information dissemination. The same thing is happening with artificial intelligence,” he said.
    
Akindeinde further stated that rather than take away jobs, artificial intelligence is going to help Nigerians, adding that the intelligence is still artificial. 
  
“Whatever you are currently doing is going to help your operation, it is not going to take your job because, at the end of the day, AI is artificial intelligence. Now for it to work that means something has existed which is human intelligence. That human intelligence has been with humans for ages, which it put together to make artificial intelligence and the thing about AI is that the things humans find difficult to do, that is what AI is doing. The things we find easy to do, AI cannot do them,” he stated. 
      
According to him, AI can also be used in the movie industry, saying that AI can listen to every conversation in a movie and transcribe in two minutes which would take one week or more to transcribe. He muted the idea of the need for training for Journalists on AI so that they will understand the workings of AI for proper information dissemination.
    
Speaking about the impact of AI on education, he said that Africa is wired for consumption, adding that they don’t produce and they don’t do things that affect the global economy all because of the educational system. He gave the instance of China where their educational system permits them to teach their children in their local language, the language they understand. “With AI when you are teaching in English it will be appearing to the person in his language, everything is converted on the spot, it is not as if they are going to translate it, it is not as if you are going to teach Igbo teacher mathematics, no, AI can do that for you on the spot.”
    
Akindeinde disclosed further that AI can also help a vision-impaired person by deploying a vision model to know what is happening around them. He decried the absence of skilled personnel among professionals for adjudication and or regulation of issues relating to IA, he therefore suggested that lawyers, Journalists, doctors and others should go for training to up-skill their knowledge on the workings of AI.