By Onyekachi Agu and Joseph Joy
The Vice-Chancellor, Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT), Professor Aloysius-Michaels Okoli has warned his staff that their jobs are threatened by the evolution of Artificial Intelligence, AI.
The VC gave the warning recently during the maiden edition of the Department of Accountancy International Conference held at Agbani, the university’s main campus. Prof Okolie warned that the advent of AI poses danger to staff members who refused to upgrade their skills and acquaint themselves with requisite knowledge of the evolving digital world.
He noted that despite the fact that AI is an invention of Human Intelligence, HI, the latter though cannot be substituted by the former but emphasised that HI needs to work at a higher speed rate to stay far and above AI.
“Having been so excited with Artificial Intelligence, I hope you know the implications. Few weeks ago most of you saw it on social media that there are plans to produce robots to take over as lawyers; Robots are now lawyers. They want to experiment it in the US. They will now go to court to be arguing cases.
“Everybody is now jumping up over the evolution of Artificial Intelligence, have you pondered on the implications? Human Intelligence ought to be over and above Artificial Intelligence because Artificial intelligence is crafted from Human intelligence. However, human intelligence needs to operate at a higher speed now.
“The question for all of us today is ‘are you preparing for the great deluge, that AI is coming to take over your job? Are you upgrading yourself to be over and above them so that robotics coming will always find you as useful hands to succeed or have you given up when they now take over? Maybe they will become VC, DVC, they will become your lecturers taking over your courses. Are we getting ready for that or is it a question of ‘No we don’t want it?’ Nobody is safe, including myself, if we fail to upgrade.
“We are already promoting it today but we have to be equally very strategic as we are promoting digitalization,” he said.
