The First Lecture

In my first year at Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO), our Logic and Philosophy lecturer, Rev. Fr. Ashiegbu, took us on a profound intellectual journey through the minds of the ancient Greek philosophers. From Thales who argued that all is water, to Heraclitus who insisted that all is fire and everything flows, men labored to decode the material essence of the universe. Each proposition was bold, poetic, and incomplete. But it was Pythagoras who seized my imagination.

Yes, the same Pythagoras who gave us that elegant truth in geometry, that in a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides. He also proclaimed something far more consequential: The universe is numbers.

If the universe is numbers, then the central business of humanity is to make sense of numbers. And how do we do that? We manipulate them, process them, transform them, because when we understand numbers, we understand the world.

A farmer who understands the numbers of yield, rainfall and soil will outperform peers.
A doctor who understands the numbers around blood flow, drug reaction, and pathology becomes a better healer. A banker, an engineer, a trader, each rises by mastering the numbers in their domain.

But the quest did not stop with human cognition. Humans began to build machines to help them interpret numbers. From the abacus to the slide rule, from ENIAC to the transistor, and from the transistor to the integrated circuit, we have been on a relentless journey to understand our universe by constructing better computational systems.

Tomorrow, at Tekedia AI Lab program, I will open the session by explaining why Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the next chapter in that ancient quest. AI is not an alien concept, it is simply humanity extending Pythagoras’ revelation.

Our world is numbers. AI helps us make better sense of those numbers. But what are numbers?

Let me bring it home. In my secondary school years, my Math teachers – Mr. Bukar, & Mr. Alaohuru (junior secondary), Mr. Aham & Mr Ukene (senior secondary), and my Further Mathematics teacher Mr. Onyezewe -taught me, in different ways, that mathematics is the science of numbers, and the foundational staircase into natural philosophy. Those lessons shaped my foundational appreciation of science.

To all Tekedia co-learners: the FIRST LECTURE comes tomorrow. We will explore why understanding AI is not optional but essential in the AI era and why mastering this new computational philosophy will unlock new vistas in careers, businesses, and nations. If we do it right, we will decode the numbers of the future and unlock abundance.  Once that is done, we go technical. Be ready!

Connect via my LinkedIn | Facebook | X | TikTok | Instagram | YouTube