Abolaji Adebayo 
In order to allay the fear that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will take away some jobs and render many jobless, experts have said the adoption of AI in Nigeria will rather create more jobs and enhance their productivity.
Speaking on the issue at a forum recently, the Founder, Hyperspace and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NeuRaL AI, Dr. Oluseyi Akindeinde, made it clear that AI adoption as disruptive as it is would not take away people’s jobs rather it would enhance their productivity.
Akindeinde also asserted that up-skilling of knowledge was a crucial requirement for sustainable AI adoption in Nigeria. He noted the challenges facing AI adoption in Nigeria included the 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 was always fear whenever a piece of technology is introduced in the country.
“Any time there is new technology that comes in, 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, it can do things faster and it can do things 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 will not allow it.
“I am here to assure that AI is not going to take anybody’s job, it is the same thing about 25 years ago when we started hearing about internet, even Journalists felt at a 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 taking away jobs, artificial intelligence would help Nigerians, adding that the intelligence was still artificial.
“Whatever you are currently doing it 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 being with human 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. For instance, if I keep my phone on a platform and I said go into the room and pick my phone on the table, now the AI because you programmed it for the table, it will come back to tell you I can’t find your phone.
But the human being will say okay, it is not on the table, it is elsewhere, he will pick it, but what humans find difficult, is what AI does better.
“As a reporter, AI would make your job better; there is an app in the phone that as I am speaking, it is recording and not only recording, once I say stop, everything recorded, it would transcribe everything.
Another person who doesn’t have it would use one hour transcribing the recording but the AI would do that seconds, so right now you can be more productive,” he added.
