“So AI has come to stay. It will also enable planning, planning as an institution as an establishment because it could handle big data, analyze it and make decisions based on the data that was given to it. So it has come to stay and it will play a major role in aviation, transport industry, logistic supply chain management and so on. So it will play a positive role in the economy.”

On insecurity, he said AI provides ready and scientific ways of tackling the challenge, saying, “Very well, AI can effectively do that because the robotics and other aspects of it can be used to detect threats and act in good time without much casualties.

“So it will be able to help us in that regard through the searchlights and on ground, in the regimented pattern, the way the military works. So AI has come to stay.”

The VC commended the inaugural lecturer who he describes as a resource person and an expert in AI, adding that he (Prof. Okorafor) has found the AI club which the institution has adopted.

“As part of our mantra we want to deploy e-learning, e-teaching, that is digitize the campus. That is part of our vision and our mission and that is what we try to encourage our students to be, and they are forward-looking students.

“They have already formed the AI club and in that club they are beginning to carry out a lot of innovative and enterprising projects you know as a way of promoting Artificial Intelligence in their own domain.

“And they are domesticating whatever they are doing. So it will help us to preserve our values and culture because it is home-grown and they are going to own it. NBU will be at the forefront of that”, Prof. Fawehinmi stated.

Earlier, the inaugural lecturer, Prof. Okorafor stresses the need for the domesticate AI in order to reflect the African culture and experiences.

He added, “The key questions are that when we are building these models, the question is who owns the data? Whose biases are being encoded in those models whether it is unconscious or conscious.

“And so if your data is not included then those models will not represent you. And so the AI tools and systems we are currently consuming don’t represent us.

“So what I mean by African centered Architecture is where we begin to encode our cultures, our traditions, our stories, nuances so that when we interact with these AI systems they know us, the models can respond to us not just the way it has been done that is more important.

“So that is really the heart of it is to make sure that it represents the African experience.”

He allayed fears that AI will lead to job loses, stating that it may not be completely ruled out, more jobs will actually be created with home-grown AI systems.

Okorafor who is also a research scholar at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy said, “Well I think transformation. You cannot because of fear holding onto the past not venture into the future. If we truly build AI systems that represent us, that means story tellers will become relevant.

“There will be new jobs, people who need to verify. So you may lose some jobs, but you create more. So been aware of the transformation means that we get to create that environment because some of the jobs we will lose will also mean we can create more.”

The don continued, “1So I think we need to change that thinking. That means we also have to be innovative. We need to see what the possibilities are. Right now you can actually see that there are new jobs, new opportunities being created.

“I mentioned story telling. Africa is rich in culture, we can be custodians. So suddenly now many people can begin to create digital opportunities where they can begin not to go to the villages and talk to the elders and create that information.

“Who knows that job in the future, who knows, but we can’t be sleeping, the world will move ahead. So we need to make this truly African.”

Punchng.com