MTN Business has used its 2024 edition of the annual CTIO Roundtable Africa event to highlight the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) and data, with the view to driving adoption and adaptation of same by businesses in Ghana.
The theme for the event was “Driving Business Value through Data and AI”, and it congregated players in AI, data as well as corporate clients of MTN in frank conversation about the importance of AI and data, in spite of the lingering fear in Africa that AI is here to cause job loses and to breach the privacies of businesses and individuals.
Chief Information Officer (CIO) of MTN Ghana, Bernard Acquah, who was also the keynote speaker at the event, told journalists that in the world today, businesses need to accept that they can no longer work in the old ways, because they need to be sure of the data of the business itself, of customers and of competition, and there is also a need to prioritize AI to drive efficiency.
He said it is therefore very critical for MTN to have a conversation with its corporate clients around the value of data and AI with the view to helping businesses to enhance their performance.
Bernard Acquire quickly demystified the fear around AI kicking humans out of jobs, saying that “AI is not an end in itself – it is a means to an end, so businesses can assign the mundane and repetitive chores to AI so that humans can focus on more critical and creative roles that require humans to do.”
He however indicated that some of the concerns about AI is real, particular the ethical concerns, where AI tools are built for facial recognition to identify and take pictures of people without their consent.
Bernard Acquire also mentioned the impact of the quality of data fed into the AI tool, saying that any AI tool is as a efficient as the data fed into it, so if the data is erroneous or is skewed in a particular way, that is exactly how the AI tool will function, and that can also be problematic.
“AI tools cannot be bias by themselves – the only reflect the biases of the humans who built it and what kind of data they fed it with. So the more the AI tool is developed, the more the biases are dealt to ensure the best results is gotten out of the AI tool,” he said.
There is also what he called the Black Box, where AI tools sometimes act in ways that humans cannot explain but just have to live with it. But in all these, there are experts who can help to minimize the risks and ensure that businesses optimize their benefits from AI.
He therefore urged businesses to seek the assistance of industry experts, particularly MTN, on what are the best AI tools they can employ for the best results.
Senior Manager for Enterprise Marketing Portfolio Management at MTN Ghana, Benedict Bentil said MTN is committed to staying ahead of the curve at all times, and for that most of its solutions for businesses are backed by AI and are very simple to use, requiring very little training for businesses to adopt and adapt to them.
“We deliberately built these solutions in a way to ensure that even with very little technical skills our clients will be able to use these AI tools to their benefit,” he said.
He noted that businesses in Ghana have gone past the AI fear stage and are beginning to get a bit more curious, and so it has put MTN on its toes to ensure that, as more and more businesses adopt AI, they also get to use it within a safe space such that their data and businesses are secure.
