The Minister of education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum has called out Africans to wake up and fully embrace the fast growing digital age.
For him, Africans should stay away from discussing AI dangers because AI has not been appreciated thoroughly enough to think of the jeopardy it may incur.
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Delivering his keynote address at the 2nd National Digital & Distance Learning Conference on Monday August 14, 2024 on the theme: “A call on Multi-Stakeholder coordination and action for equitable access to digital and distance learning,” the minister made these remarks.
“We are in the 4th industrial revolution. The world is changing. Africa’s place in the world is going to be defined by how we respond to the current era we live in. The erra of the first revolution passed us by.
“Electricity came, we didn’t catch it. Then computers started with main frame computers, big ones. Now computers are on our phones, we didn’t catch it much. We are in the fourth revolution. The merger between the biological and physical. You can enter your home by just looking into some mirror and facial recognition software will allow you to do many things.”
He said he chanced on a discussion by the international media addressing some of the dangers of Artificial intelligence but that was when he told himself, “we have not even gotten there to talk about dangers.”
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The member of parliament for the Bosomtwe Constituency in the Ashanti Region further highlighted the Sub-Saharan Africa Africa’s poor tertiary enrolment ratio as compared to other countries he did not specifically mention.
“When you look at the Gross tertiary enrolment ratio of Sub-Saharan Africa Africa, 7%. Different countries have changed their fortunes by incresing their Gross tertiary enrolment tratio from 40 to 50 to 60% and some are at 90%,” he expressed.
Inspite of Mr. Adutsum’s concerns, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been transforming education in recent years.
This increasing significance of AI has garnered the interest of numerous scholars actively exploring diverse methods to incorporate various AI tools within the classroom environment.
With the increasing availability of data and the growing sophistication of machine learning algorithms, AI has the potential to revolutionise the way we learn, teach and assess student progress in their educational endeavors.
