Copyright tribuneonlineng
Tech expert and Chief Executive Officer of Bildup AI, Mr. Chibuike Aguene, has urged Nigeria to urgently equip its young people with the skills needed to thrive in a rapidly changing world powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), warning that the nation risks being left behind if it fails to act now. Speaking on Arise TV Newsnight on Saturday, Aguene said the future of work will be defined by hybrid intelligence, where human intelligence is seamlessly augmented by AI, stressing that global CEOs are already investing heavily in the technology with visible results. “We’re not just experiencing another tech shift like we’ve seen over the past decades,” he said. “We’re living through a workforce revolution, the like of which we’ve never seen before, where intelligence is going to be hybrid, partly human and partly machine,” he said. Giving context to the evolving landscape, Aguene explained: “Everything that exists today; television, aircraft, mobile phones, came from human intelligence. But we are now transitioning into a superhuman era, where the workforce of the future will be powered by young people who augment their intelligence with AI.” He cautioned that while business leaders across the world are already leveraging AI for growth, Africa, and Nigeria in particular, still lags in preparing its youth to meet the demands of this new reality. “It’s an interesting time to be alive, but it also poses a challenge for us in Africa, where we have not even been able to equip young people with the foundational intelligence needed to compete and now we’re talking about hybrid intelligence,” he said. According to Aguene, productivity in the near future will depend on the ability of individuals and businesses to integrate AI into their daily operations. “Anybody that is going to be productive a few years from now will have to be equipped to have AI as a co-worker. That’s the direction every business owner should be thinking about now; how to integrate AI, prepare staff, and retrain them. If you’re hiring new people, AI must be at the center of it,” he stressed. He described AI as no longer an experiment but an operational necessity. “Any business that says this AI thing doesn’t concern us will not be in business for too long,” he warned. “It’s also a challenge for us as a nation to start preparing for how to educate the next generation. Otherwise, we’ll lose them in terms of creativity and productivity.” Aguene fuether painted a vivid picture of the transformation ahead, saying, “We are living in a superhuman era. Anybody who is five years old today will laugh when they hear that we once operated with only human intelligence. Their generation will live in an era where intelligence is hybrid. The way we are living now will just be part of history,” he said To stay ahead, he urged Nigeria to invest massively in education, training, and innovation, focusing on developing hybrid intelligence and encouraging businesses to adopt AI as a core operational tool. “AI is no longer a distant concept, it’s right here with us,” he said. “We are going to reorganize and rethink entire workflows in every organization. For instance, if a customer support officer works nine to five, there’s a limit to what they can achieve. But if you augment that person’s intelligence with AI, they’ll accomplish in weeks what would normally take months,” he said. He added that collaboration across sectors is crucial, as no stakeholder can drive the transformation alone. “There has to be cooperation across the board,” he said. “At Bildup AI, we already have a platform equipping people to become superhuman. The term superhuman and hybrid intelligence will soon become common, because that’s the reality of what is coming and it’s something we should all be excited about,” he said.
