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Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines, this involves machines mimicking the capabilities of humans such as learning and decision making. We make use of AI every day to carry out tasks without noticing. Our phones use AI to complete our sentences when typing, recommendations we get on e-commerce sites such as Jumia and Konga, Apple’s Siri, Google assistant, and directions you get from Google maps are all applications of AI. Other terms such as machine learning, deep learning, machine vision, natural language processing which you may be familiar with are all subsets of AI.
AI is applicable in every area, we are beginning to see AI being used in agriculture as precision agriculture, self-driving cars in transportation, fraud detection, and cyber security, medical diagnosis in Healthcare, e-commerce, Finance, Education, Art, that’s right, AI does art.
In Nigeria, a lot of people have an impression that AI is yet to pick up or is non-existent. However, I assure you that is wrong, this wrong perception may be because the AI community isn’t so large or you don’t get to hear much about it on the news or social media, but there are institutions, training centers, influencers, and entrepreneurs using AI in Nigeria and we would be talking about some of them below.
NATIONAL CENTRE FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ROBOTICS ABUJA
This is a government-owned center that was inaugurated in November 2020, it is currently under the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA). Dr. Isa Pantami, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy stated that the center will serve the purpose of creating a vision for Artificial Intelligence in the country, identify Artificial Intelligence-driven use-cases, support data stewardship, and develop an Artificial Intelligence ecosystem, among others. It is interesting to note that this center is going to house the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Programme (MIT-REAP) office set to translate research insights into practical frameworks.
Data Science Nigeria (DSN)
Data Science Nigeria is a non-profit organization. Their vision is to build a world-class Artificial Intelligence (AI) knowledge, research, and innovation ecosystem, and deliver high-impact transformational research, business use applications, AI-first start-ups, support employability, and social good use cases. They offer training, certifications, machine learning competitions, AI boot camps, and give free AI e-books. They are doing great things over there.
Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Nigeria (RAIN)
RAIN is a training institute located in Ibadan, they provide intensive courses in robot development and automation, as well as in artificial intelligence and machine learning. They have a research team with membership seats open for postgraduate research students in Nigerian Universities. University Lecturers and Industry based researchers are also eligible for membership and fellowship on their research team.
We have just had a sneak peek at some institutions focused on AI, and there are more of them out there. We have some AI hubs that operate mostly online such as AI Saturdays Lagos, and Abuja AI that’s been quite active on Twitter. You just have to search and you shall find them.
Now let’s talk about some startups and companies using AI in Nigeria
UBENWA
UBENWA is a Nigerian Company using AI to analyze babies’ cry to detect early signs of anomalies that could be fatal such as asphyxia or brain injury. They do this using an app, which is amazing. Did you know Asphyxia is one of the top three causes of mortality in new babies?
UBA LEO
Leo is United Bank for Africa’s financial assistant for customers. Customers can Send Money, Buy Airtime, Check Account Balances, Pay Bills, and a lot more with ease and convenience via Chat with Leo on Facebook messenger, WhatsApp, or Apple Business Chat anytime, anywhere. A lot of other financial institutions have such systems in place to assist customers.
Aajoh
Aajoh is another Nigerian start-up into medical diagnosis using AI. They can predict a disease when fed with symptoms the patient is experiencing and that something cool. Aajoh was launched in 2015, there has not been much news about them lately, but I hope they are doing great.
In any area there are challenges, we would be having a look at some challenges rocking AI in Nigeria.
Skill: There is a scarcity of skilled AI practitioners in Nigeria, this, in turn, affects training and mentorship for aspiring AI developers. There is also no Nigerian higher institution offering a bachelor’s or master’s degree in Artificial intelligence, machine learning, machine vision, or deep learning and something has to be done about that to get more people involved if we are to catch up with the AI train.
Investment: There aren’t a lot of local Investors willing to invest in the field of AI, this is not to say there aren’t potential local Investors, but most don’t understand the potential in the field and are skeptical when it comes to investing in tech. Hence there is a lot of reliance on foreign investors, and this simply means the solutions to local problems will be owned and controlled by foreign companies.
AI jobs in Nigeria
Running on a quick search for jobs in the field of AI within the past one month on LinkedIn, there were openings at Airtel, parallel score, Andela amongst others for data scientists, AI engineers, Natural language processing engineers. This is good news and more vacancies are expected to open up as AI continues to develop in Nigeria. There is a rise in openings for AI-related roles in the world and the pay is pretty good.
We are almost done here and I would like us to talk about some fears people have about AI.
Let’s first talk about the fear of AI being a job killer.
A lot of people believe that AI is going to take away jobs, and with the increasing abilities of AI, those fears have continued to grow. However, AI is used to augment human performance and has not gotten to the point of entirely replacing humans, plus if we are being factual, machines can already do a lot of what humans do, and yet humans still have their jobs. That is not to say that some roles would not be phased out. Besides all these, it is important to note that AI is creating jobs too and has a tremendous impact on economies. Remember the introduction of computers made typewriter typists, and repair technicians defunct but made way for computer operators, engineers, programmers, graphic designers, and many more openings. Here in Nigeria, it’s safe to say that AI is not taking jobs anytime soon but rather it’s going to be creating new jobs. However, we have a lot of catching up to do in the field of AI.The AI apocalypse.
There are fears that an AI system would develop super intelligence and decide to become the master of the earth, just as in the Terminator movie franchise, but that would mean machines would have gotten to a state of artificial super intelligence and that is something we are far from achieving.
Right now we are still at the level of narrow AI which is only programmed to carry out specific tasks, we need to get to artificial general intelligence before we even talk about artificial superintelligence and I am sure mankind would have figured something out before that happens.
That’s all for now. Feel free to drop your thoughts in the comments section, and don’t forget to clap.
Special thanks to everyone who reviewed it.
REFERENCES
- AI in Nigeria by C Heldreth 2019
- Fears of AI by Ron schmelzer
- AI by IBM cloud education.
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