The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa CCIE, emphasized the imperative role of artificial intelligence (AI) in enhancing productivity across vital sectors of the Nigerian economy. Inuwa made this known while delivering a Keynote Address on ”Artificial Intelligence: Effective Communication for National Security”; at the 2023 Security and Spokespersons Awards and Conference which was held in Abuja.
Acknowledging the pervasive influence of AI already changing daily lives, almost entirely in ways that improve human health, safety, and productivity, Inuwa averred that AI is beyond a tool, as it is a new way of building a relationship between humans and machines.
”In building that relationship, we need to look beyond just having a tool we use for our daily activities and start thinking in the direction of developing a system which can help meet certain human needs” Inuwa said.
In addressing concerns related to the application of AI, Inuwa raised the issue of “explainability in the AI” or the “black box” within AI algorithms. He emphasized the importance of understanding and controlling the algorithms, particularly in the context of social media, to prevent AI from spiraling out of control.
”Imagine having a system that makes decisions for us and does not understand the way it came about making that decision, now, that is indeed a red flag, having AI go out of control, so, we need to get AI to be always for humanity because it is the most existential threat to humanity today”, the DG stressed.
Inuwa said, ” Countries around the world are making efforts toward deciphering the functionalities of artificial intelligence and coming up with policies and putting standards in place to ensure they are AI-ready countries, and so Nigeria cannot take the back seat”.
”In Nigeria, we are looking at it from three perspectives; having AI-ready principles, data, and AI-ready security”
”This invariably means that as a matter of principle, we should have redlines that AI must not cross, to achieve this, last year we started our journey by crowdsourcing on how to build National AI Policy and we have the first draft ready”, Inuwa maintained.
According to Inuwa, ”when the present administration came on board, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu mandated the Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy to accelerate the diversification of the Nigerian economy by enhancing productivity in critical sectors through technological innovation, and we strongly believe that to achieve this, AI is our the best tool to use in that regard”
”To take this further, we launched a call for research, where we are offering a grant to forty-five Nigerians to research Artificial Intelligence so that we get feedback on how to use AI in Health, Education, Agriculture, Finance, Security, and many more.”
”We are giving up to N5Million to each researcher because we want to co-create and design the policy collaboratively, not the government using armchair theories to come up with the policies, we need everybody to be onboard", the Director-General noted.
Acknowledging the need for digital feasibility ahead of AI adoption, Inuwa urged efforts to connect the unconnected swiftly. He emphasized the importance of global standards for regulating AI, addressing concerns about bias, gender bias, and racist behavior exhibited by AI systems due to the data used in their development.
Inuwa who went on to explain other perspectives, including data and security, sued for global standards for the regulation of AI.
”We are seeing how AI is becoming biased, gender biased, and even exhibiting racist behavior, partly because of the data used to develop it. So, if you develop an AI system and train it in another country and decide to take it elsewhere, it will not work, hence, the need for global data for everyone to use to train it” Inuwa outlined.
Also harping on Nigeria’s abundant resources, talents, and youthful population, Inuwa affirmed that the country has a competitive advantage in becoming the frontier in digital technological innovation.
”Although we lost out during the first, second, and third Industrial Revolutions because they needed capital investment in the fourth, we can use our talents to compete with any country in the world, given the fact that talent is the human component of technology”
”To achieve this, the Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani, unveiled the Strategic Plan for the Ministry which has strategic pillars, including, Knowledge, Policies, Infrastructure, and Trade”, the DG mentioned.
In conclusion, Inuwa affirmed AI as a top priority for NITDA, highlighting the agency’s National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR) as a focal point for AI initiatives. The event, organized by Image Merchant Promotion Ltd in collaboration with Coalition Society Organizations, featured discussions on the Security and Spokespersons Communication Awards along with goodwill messages.
