E-Business
AI Adoption: Akindeinde Assures Nigerians on Jobs, Calls for Up-Skilling of Knowledge
Dr Oluseyi Akindeinde, Founder, Hyperspace and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) NeuRaL AI, has said that AI adoption as disruptive as it may be, would not take away people’s jobs rather it would enhance their productivity.
Dr. Oluseyi Akindeinde, co-founder, Hyperspace Technologies Limited
Dr Akindeinde made this assertion at the NITRA ICT Growth Conference 4.0, organised by Nigeria Information Technology Reporters Association (NITRA) and was held on Wednesday, 28th of August, 2024, at the CitiHeight Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos.
The event themed “Impact of AI on National Development: Prospects, Policies, and Challenges in Nigeria” hosted industry players to brainstorm on the prospects and also proffer solutions to challenges of Artificial Intelligence’s adoption in Nigeria.
Akindeinde also asserted that up-skilling of knowledge 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 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 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 democratized 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 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 second, so right now you can be more productive.
He said 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 what 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 own 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.
During the panel session he also tackled the question if Nigeria has the requisite skill to embrace the concept of artificial intelligence, he said that Nigerians do not have the requisite skill right now.
According to him, “So, one of the things we have noted is that we don’t have that skill, even the regulator as well because the challenge is that technology will always precede regulation but if you want to regulate you can’t regulate what you don’t understand.
“How come we had protest, and we cannot use AI to identify those who were looting, stealing or causing destruction, I know in other climes they have a data base where they can actually tell you the person.
“But in other to do all these you need the skill, you need the understanding of the piece of technology that you are going to be dealing with.”
He added that AI as a piece of technology, a general all-purpose technology that can be used across several industries, just like the internet.
He said, “It is technology for everybody and there is no special internet engineer because everybody has skill, internet skill, because we know it will help us.”
China’s Huawei Technologies unveiled an AI computing system on Saturday that an industry expert said rivals Nvidia’s most advanced product, as the company aims to expand its footprint in the country’s booming AI sector.
The CloudMatrix 384 system made its public debut at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), a three-day event in Shanghai, attracting a large crowd to Huawei’s booth with its showcase of cutting-edge AI innovations.
The system has attracted significant interest from the global AI community since Huawei (HWT.UL) first introduced it in April. Industry analysts see it as a direct challenger to Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72, the most advanced system-level offering currently available from the U.S. chipmaker.
In an April article, Dylan Patel, founder of semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis, stated that Huawei now possesses AI system capabilities that could surpass those of Nvidia.
Huawei staff at its WAIC booth declined to comment when asked to introduce the CloudMatrix 384 system.
A spokesperson for Huawei did not respond to questions.
Huawei has become widely regarded as China’s most promising domestic supplier of chips essential for AI development, even though the company faces U.S. export restrictions.
Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang told Bloomberg in May that Huawei had been “moving quite fast” and named the CloudMatrix as an example.
The CloudMatrix 384 system features 384 of Huawei’s latest 910C chips and, according to SemiAnalysis, surpasses Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72 in certain performance metrics, despite the latter using 72 B200 chips.
SemiAnalysis attributes this performance advantage to Huawei’s strong system design, which offsets the lower power of individual chips by leveraging a greater number of them and incorporating system-level innovations.
Huawei describes the system as utilizing a “supernode” architecture that enables ultra-high-speed interconnectivity between chips.
In June, Zhang Pingan, CEO, Huawei Cloud confirmed that the CloudMatrix 384 was already operational on Huawei’s cloud platform.
Transcorp Hotels Plc has delivered a stellar performance in the first half of 2025, recording a 60% year-on-year surge in revenue to ₦47.57 billion, up from ₦29.72 billion in H1 2024. Gross profit climbed 71% to ₦36.21 billion, maintaining a strong 76% margin despite inflation and operational headwinds.
The hospitality giant, a subsidiary of Transnational Corporation Plc, also announced an interim dividend payout of ₦1.024 billion — offering ₦0.10 per 50 kobo ordinary share to shareholders.
In a bold move, the company unveiled Nigeria’s largest corporate venue — the 5,000-seat Transcorp Centre — staking its claim as the new leader in event hospitality. Chairman Emmanuel Nnorom described the results as proof of Transcorp Hotels’ transformative strategies and unwavering investor commitment. MD/CEO Uzo Oshogwe attributed the success to relentless execution and a resilient business model.
Transcorp Hotels, renowned for iconic assets like Transcorp Hilton Abuja and its digital platform Aura, says it isn’t just leading Nigeria’s hospitality sector — it’s redefining excellence across Africa.
Chinese “threat actors” have hacked Microsoft’s SharePoint document software servers and targeted the data of the businesses using it, the firm has said.
China state-backed Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon as well as China-based Storm-2603 were said to have “exploited vulnerabilities” in on-premises SharePoint servers, the kind used by firms, but not in its cloud-based service.
The US tech giant has released security updates in response and has advised all on-premises SharePoint server customers to install them.
“Investigations into other actors also using these exploits are still ongoing,” Microsoft said in a statement.
The firm said it had “high confidence” the hackers would continue to target systems which have not installed its security updates.
It added that it would update its website blog with more information as its investigation continues.
Microsoft said it had observed attacks in which hackers had sent a request to a SharePoint server “enabling the theft of the key material by threat actors”.
Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at Mandiant Consulting firm, a division of Google Cloud, told reporter, it was “aware of several victims in several different sectors across a number of global geographies”.
Carmakal said it appeared that governments and businesses that use SharePoint on their sites were the primary target.
A number of adversaries who stole material encoded by cryptography were then able to regain ongoing access to the victims’ SharePoint data, he said.
“This was exploited in a very broad way, very opportunistically before a patch was made available. That’s why this is significant,” Carmakal said.
Carmakal said the “China-nexus actor” was deploying techniques similar to previous campaigns associated with Beijing.
Microsoft said Linen Typhoon had “focused on stealing intellectual property, primarily targeting organizations related to government, defence, strategic planning, and human rights” for 13 years.
It added that Violet Typhoon had been “dedicated to espionage”, primarily targeting former government and military staff, non-governmental organizations, think tanks, higher education, the media, the financial sector and the health sector in the US, Europe, and East Asia.
Meanwhile, Storm-2603 was “assessed with medium confidence to be a China-based threat actor”.
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