Ministers trade words over ownership of AI implementation platform,writes Sonny Aragba-Akpore The proposed implementation strategy and platform to grow Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now a source of disagreement between immediate past Communications & Digital Economy Minister,Isa Pantami and his successor ,Bosun Tijani. When he spoke at the end of a four-day National Artificial Intelligence Strategy (NAIS) workshop hosted recently,Tijani said the workshop besides being a wake- up call,was designed to formulate a strategy on addressing the needs of Nigerian citizens and communities to look ahead to the beauty and importance of AI. While stating the benefits of adopting cutting-edge technologies such as AI “in raising the productivity of users for our collective prosperity,”the Minister noted the increased attention on AI across the world and growth in investments in the technology in Nigeria saying: “Over 1 Petabyte of storage is already being allocated to AI projects in Nigeria by Galaxy Backbone Limited.
And the Pilot Compute Programme that we are undertaking, which is seeing 21st Century Technologies invest over $2 million in Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), is also going to put us in a position to start building and narrating the story for why we need to invest in our computing power as a nation.” To fast track the adoption and implementation of the AI,the minister announced the relaunch of the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence & Robotics (NCAIR) saying:�.
