By Gabriel Eze 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. Some of the activities computers with artificial intelligence are designed for include speech recognition learning, planning, and problem solving.

Simply put, artificial intelligence is a machine or robot which is able to do what a human being can do especially its ability to act, think, and carry out intelligent tasks which only humans could do before.

Benefits of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is making life easier for man. With the creation of intelligent solutions, we have seen many services in the world: Apple’s Siri, Tesla self-driving cars, Zenvus agtech, Medcera healthtech , and Japanese machine builder Okuma in manufacturing. The list is endless.

Types of AI

AI has been generally grouped into two Narrow AI and General AI.

• Narrow AI: Also known as weak AI. It is restrictive in its applications in that it is designed to perform a narrow task like facial recognition, conducting internet searches or only driving a car. However, the long-term goal of many researchers is to create general AI.
• General AI (AGI): While narrow AI may outperform humans at whatever its specific task is, like playing chess or solving equations, AGI would outperform humans at nearly every cognitive task.

Will Artificial intelligence have a soul in future?

The human soul is made of 3 components: The mind, the will and emotions. These are mental abilities in humans that help man to think, to act and to decide on actions as well as respond to stimulus in and around him.

Will AI posses a soul comparable to or possibly exceed humans in future?

The answer is YES. If what you mean is that it will “think” and do many things. It can solve the problems humans solve using their intelligence.

Flowing from the Turing test, if a machine can answer a question put to it, using the same words that a person would use, and then we can call that machine intelligent. Accordingly, Alan Turing posits that if a machine acts as intelligently as human being, then it is as intelligent as a human being. But that is the extent the intelligence of a robot can go.

The answer is No. If you are looking for machines with full human abilities and capabilities; a machine system that is free from human interference and such that is able to acquire human intuitive intelligence. That would be disastrous.

Artificial Intelligence cannot have humanity!

Why?

• Source: The soul remains electricity. If you turn off the power, it dies. So, AI cannot be seen as soul-ful because it has no life of itself. The energy comes from electricity or battery unlike humans which are powered organically. I admit that some forms of AI are already achieving brilliant results with huge and fast memory, rules-based automation, and layers of pattern matching to perform their extraordinary feats.
• Self-Aware: But this processing is not aware, perceiving, feeling, cognition. The processing doesn’t go beyond its intended activities even if the outcomes are unpredictable.

• Core Beliefs & Motivations: these are powerful human drives that a machine can never have.

• Collaboration: can a ?thinking? machine work together with a human to reach his or her goals in the same way another human would? I think not.

• Languages, Intonations and Cultural genuflections: One of the major goals of AI is getting a computer to understand and subsequently communicate in natural languages, a field called natural language processing (NLP). The computer must take natural human languages, like English or Spanish, and glean insight that it can process.

But the question is, will it be able to pronounce or speak Yoruba the way an Ibadan man will speak or can it distinguish an Ijebu man from an Owo man by their accent with their accompanying idiosyncrasies and genuflections? Tell me please if you know.

Clearly, the inner-workings of the human mind are complicated and the challenge of creating machines that could simulate human intellectual abilities is daunting. Moreover, the possibility of endowing computer systems with human-like intelligence still remains debatable.

AI will solve a lot of human problems, that’s not disputable. But, in and of itself, AI cannot replace the human mind. Let’s not take up a role that is within the exclusive list of the Almighty except we are trying to rehash a project in the order of the biblical Tower of Babel.

By Nnamdi Odumody

In Nigeria, 3,000 tons of waste is generated daily. Due to an ineffective waste management system, this leads to blockage of drainage and waterways, and environmental degradation, resulting in flooding (like in Lagos), and spreading cholera and other waterborne diseases. There are 24.4 million homeless people in Nigeria and the nation needs 17 million houses to solve its housing paralysis.

Brickify wants to fix this friction by recycling plastic waste into paving blocks/bricks that are used to construct roads and to build low cost houses for the poor, internally displaced persons from conflicts and epidemic, as well as those living in shanties/slums.

These blocks contain recycled plastic and are thermoplastic polyolefins of high rigidity, crystallinity, high melting point and excellent chemical resistance. The blocks are lightweight, and modular i.e. they can be moved from one location to another and can easily be coupled while not requiring skilled labor as they interlock.

Brickify seeks to offer an alternative future for the manufacture of structural and nonstructural elements for the construction of architectural projects by generating a construction system integrated with light elements, allowing quick installations; it is safe and inexpensive. Their construction system is 30 percent cheaper than traditional systems in rural areas.

Brickify is solving both the challenge of providing houses to meet demand and making the environment sustainable.