The 3rd annual Data Science Nigeria Artificial Intelligence Summit was held at the Oriental Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos on Tuesday, 19 November 2019. The theme of the AI Summit was “Artificial Intelligence for Socioeconomic Development Summit”. The Summit included an unveiling of the first artificial intelligence (AI) textbook for Nigerian’s primary and secondary schools.

The Artificial Intelligence Summit featured global and indigenous AI professionals from the industry, academia, consulting and Big Tech. The Summit is one of Data Science Nigeria’s annual programs aimed at building Nigeria’s Artificial Intelligence ecosystem and supporting our vision of raising 1 million AI talents in 10 years.

Welcome Address, Bayo Adekanmbi 

• The welcome speech was given by the Convener, Dr Bayo Adekanmbi. In his speech he explained the quest to raise the bar by training 1 million AI talents in the next 10 years, and the reasons why we launched the first AI textbook for youngsters, thus facilitating learning both in schools and in various homes.

Keynote Speeches

Artificial Intelligence for Development, Prof. Thomas G. Dietterich, Distinguished Professor (Emeritus) and Director of Intelligent Systems Founder and Chief Scientist, BigML

• Professor Thomas Dietterich gave the first keynote address on the topics of “Trustworthy Machine Learning and Robust Artificial Intelligence”. The Director of Intelligent Systems Research at Oregon State University highlighted the threats to machine learning performance, such as assumptions of independent and identically distributed Data, Markov Assumption in Markov decision processes, and the Closed World Assumption, in which the class labels are mutually exclusive and exhaustive.

Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare Delivery, Dr. Stephen G. Odaibo, CEO Retina.ai, USA

• Dr Stephen Odaibo, the CEO of Retina-AI, USA, spoke about “Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare Delivery”. In his presentation, he talked about diabetic retinopathy, one of the most common causes of blindness in the world, and how RETINA-AI has assembled the most highly-trained and talented interdisciplinary team in the retina world to proffer solutions to this disease.

Data-Driven Business: DataBeaver Case Study Tomi Amao, Chief Technology Officer, Softcom Nigeria,

• Tomi Amao, the Chief Technology Officer of Softcom, explained the advantages of businesses driven by data using the DataBeaver software. DataBeaver is a tool that enables businesses and organisations to make insightful and quantitative decisions through the use of data captured from several data points. This mobile app enables agents to collect data based on forms defined by the organisation and allows a field agent to collect as many data entry points as possible, or as defined by the organisation. Tomi also highlighted the case study of DataBeaver by MTN, RIFAN, PILOTLITE VENTURES, and IKOYI/OBALENDE LCDA.

Panel Discussion: How AI Drives Socio-Economic Development

A panel discussion of how Artificial Intelligence drives socio-economic development was moderated by Kathleen Siminyu, Regional Coordinator, Artificial Intelligence for Development.

On the panel were Dr. Stephen G. Odaibo (CEO Retina.ai, USA), Dr. Eric Sodomka (Research Scientist, Facebook Research), Victor Ohuruogu (Program Manager United Nations Foundation Global Partnership on Sustainable Development Data), Ayodeji Balogun (Chief Technology Officer, Terragon Group) and Tomi Amao (Chief Technology Officer, Softcom Nigeria).

Cognitive Artificial Intelligence Solution
Lawrence Muthoga of Microsoft Africa presented “AI for Good”. In his talk, he described Artificial Intelligence as the technology that can perceive, learn and reason, and extend the capabilities of people and organizations. Lawrence said technology is about people and how it can amplify human ingenuity. He said that computers understand the world through perceptions such as vision and speech, and through cognition such as language and knowledge.

Geospatial Artificial Intelligence with GRID3
Wole Ademola, the In-Country Geographic Information Systems Consultant at Flowminder, spoke about “Geospatial Artificial Intelligence with GRID3”. He explained the mission of the GRID3 project, which is to build spatial data solutions that make development goals achievable. In his talk, he said that geographic information systems (GISs) contain a wealth of information classified by geographical locations, and these make excellent training datasets for AI systems. That is, GISs can add value to AI by providing rich datasets for predicting geospatial events such as car crashes or crimes, estimating driving times, or helping businesses determine where to construct the next new store.

Debate: Artificial Intelligence for Good
Of the six schools that were expected to participate in the AI debate, only three were able to make it to the Summit. The three schools that attended the live competition around AI concepts were the Atlantic Hall, Epe; Chrisland School, Opebi; and the Juilliard Academy, Lagos. One student represented each school in the debate.

The Juilliard Academy won the debate, Chrisland School, Opebi was the first runner-up and Atlantic Hall, Epe was the second runner-up. Each school that participated was given an award and free copies of the Beginners’ Artificial Intelligence and Python Programming book.

Unveiling Beginners’ Artificial Intelligence and Python Programming
At the end of the event, the first AI textbook for grades 4 to 8 was unveiled. The convener, Dr Bayo Adekanmbi, expressed Data Science Nigeria’s goal of raising one million AI talents in 10 years. For this to happen, every child in Nigeria deserves the opportunity to be educated at a young age about AI and how it’s shaping our world. Therefore, we launched the first AI textbook for Nigerian primary and secondary schools to facilitate learning in both schools and homes. He further emphasised that this first AI book would enable Nigerian children to understand the basic concepts of AI before they reached age 14.

The summit ended with the convener, Dr Bayo Adekanmbi, thanking the speakers and the audience for their time and attention.

More pictures from 2019 Artificial Intelligence Summit