Developers Urged To Embrace AI In Nigeria

Through AI use, architects and building developers can auto-generate architectural plans, says Chief Executive Officer of Data Science Nigeria – Dr Olubayo Adekanmbi

The Chief Executive Officer of Data Science Nigeria, Dr Olubayo Adekanmbi, has charged engineers to leverage artificial intelligence for the development of the building industry. He gave the charge at a webinar themed ‘Generating anything with Artificial Intelligence: Building impactful solutions with large language models’, organised by the Nigerian Academy of Engineering in Lagos recently. He observed that investors’ interest in generative AI soared this year with an estimated $14.1 billion funding in 86 deals as against $1.2 billion in 2019 for 59 deals.

According to him, through AI use, architects and building developers can auto-generate architectural plans based on building location, climate conditions, and budgets. Adekanmbi argued that with the required skills and capacity, professionals could deploy generative Al to help project developers and engineers optimise the build-out of solar farms, heat pumps, water systems, and other infrastructure. He said, “For the manufacturing and product design, engineers and designers can use generative Al, to accelerate the design and development of parts and components. Generative AI possibilities include image generation and manipulation, software and coding, video creation, audio generation, organisational collaboration, enterprise search, and text generation and summarisation.”

Adekambi cautioned that there were ethical concerns about Generative AI, disclosing that the concerns included lack of transparency, biased responses, inaccuracy, privacy concerns, and Intellectual property issues. The President of the Nigerian Academy of Engineering, Professor Peter Onwualu, encouraged members to put into practice the knowledge gained from the forum.