Professor Jerry John Kponyo, a professor of telecommunication engineering at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), says Ghana needs to position itself well to maximize the full benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
He said the potentials of artificial intelligence (AI) were numerous and Ghana could strategically position itself well to leverage its maximum benefits to drive the economy.
Prof. Kponyo, speaking at the Ghana Data Summit (INABAXGHANA) in Kumasi noted that, the key drivers of the fourth industrial revolution was AI and currently transforming a lot of economies in the areas of agriculture, healthcare, energy, finance and businesses.
“We have to recognize that AI is a game changer, intentionally we plan as a nation and have a strategy with reference to where we want to be in the next decade and beyond”.
The summit was organized under the theme: “Unleashing the Potentials of AI through Grassroots Engagements.”
Prof. Kponyo, who is the Scientific Director of the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Lab (RAIL) at KNUST, indicated that concerns had been raised with reference to the negative effects of AI.
Notwithstanding these negative observations, he asserted that, the RAIL was advocating that “let’s harness the positives in AI and guard against the negatives.”
He said Ghana was lucky to have had an AI Strategy (2023-2033) with the help of the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) and Ministry of Communications.
What was left for Ghana was to expedite actions in passing the Strategy to have an implementation plan for it to be rolled out as had been done in other parts of Africa, including Rwanda.
Prof. Kponyo said that AI was impacting every field and “it is important we worked together in creating Afrocentric datasets and making AI affordable for all.”
Mr. Delali Agbenyegah, Senior Data Science Lead at Data Science Network, said it had become more important to have discussions about how emerging technologies could be used for sustainable development in Ghana and beyond.
In doing so, capacity building and awareness creation must be central to help Ghanaians take advantage of AI in various sectors to improve systems and processes.
“It is important to involve the grassroots because if we are building a system and we are not involving the people that we are building it for, you will end up developing something that is not useful to them.
Once we acknowledge the good side of AI, we are also careful about the training given in AI to ensure that it is built responsibly, that the data used in building AI is not biased”, he emphasized.
