Mascot Information and Technology Solutions held the maiden edition of Nigeria ICT Fest on December 4 and 5, 2015 at two locations in Lagos State with the aim of bridging the technology gap between Nigeria and the developed world.
Two international speakers attended the event.
They were Micah Redding, a US-based software developer and IEET contributing writer, and Mira Kwak, South Korea-based artificial intelligence researcher.
Top scientists and philosophers such as IEET Fellow, Dr. Aubrey de Grey; IEET Executive Director, Dr. James Hughes; IEET Fellow, Dr. Ben Goertzel; and IEET Fellow, Dr. Natasha Vita-More, spoke remotely via Skype at the event.
Redding spoke on the first day on the topic: “Christianity, Emerging Technologies, and the developing world — Nigeria’s role in humanity’s future.”
He challenged the view that Christians are not supposed to be actively involved in the society.
He spoke about vertical and horizontal development.
In his words, vertical development refers to developments that are revolutionary, while horizontal developments refer to improvements on existing technologies.
Kwak, an artificial intelligence researcher from Seoul Korea, spoke on Day 2 on how to be a leading country by and in ICT.
She talked about culture and how Nigerian culture could be portrayed positively to the international community.
In her words: “Advantages to latecomers in the developing world is that they can: grow faster than developed countries, avoid trial and error, achieve technological and industrial upgrading and redesign current technologies and solve current ICT problems.”
The organizers of Nigeria ICT Fest are a team of young people, including Agbolade Omowole, Imolode Michael and Ayemhere Aidaghese.
They believe that emerging and life-extending technologies can improve life expectancy in Nigeria.
For instance, the average health span (life expectancy) in Nigeria is around 52 years, which is low, compared to the average life expectancy of 83 in Japan and 81 in Western Europe.
Nigeria ICT Fest organizers feel there is the need for awareness on increasing life expectancy in the country.
To achieve this, top researchers in ageing were in the line-up at the event.
Dr. Aubrey de Grey, a top UK-based gerontologist and Chief Science Officer of SENS Foundation, spoke on his research in regenerative medicine and ageing, which he defines as the life-long accumulation of “damage” to the body that occurs as an intrinsic side-effect of the body’s normal operation.
Dr. Ilia Stambler, Israeli researcher on ageing and Affiliate Scholar with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, spoke remotely on the topic: “The tasks of longevity promotion: science, ethics and public policy.”
Stambler said to extend healthy life, we need to ameliorate degenerative ageing and given the benefits, longevity needs to be actively pursued.
Dr. James Hughes, the Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, spoke on techno progressivism.
Dr. Ben Goertzel spoke on Artificial General Intelligence and how it differs from Artificial Intelligence, which is narrowly focused to solve problems.
In his presentation, Goertzel showed robots playing football and how iCog labs is helping to redefine education in Ethiopia, a developing country, by giving children a machine that teached them.
One of the participants asked him what is being done to ensure that artificial intelligence (AI) doesn’t get out of hands and attack people or get hacked and remotely controlled to wreck havoc.
He responded that we have car accidents because of the invention of car and as such AI will not be perfect.
Eray Ozkural, a computer scientist from Turkey, spoke via Skype.
Ozkural talked about a post-scarcity economy and singularity cranes.
He said Nigeria has to manufacture her own chips if it ever wishes to catch up with the developed world.
Trans-humanism and post-humanism was one of the topics at the event and was presented by Loredana Terec Vlad via Skype.
Vlad talked about trans-humanism and the ethics surrounding its application.
Vlad is a researcher at Lumen Research Centre in Humanistic and Social Sciences, which also sponsors publication of Nigeria ICT Fest presentations in a special edition of their journal.
The partnership will help in shaping the image of Nigeria by the developed world.
Hank Pellissier, the Managing Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, sent in his speech titled: “How the American public views Nigeria and Africans.”
Nigerian speakers at the event included Olaleye Dada, a sport journalist and presenter; Abiodun Mabadeje, a motivational speaker and businessman; and Kehinde Ajose, award winning journalist.
Mabadeje presented his slide on how Information and Communications Technology can aid human capital development.
Panelists at the event were Godwin Anyebe, Odia Patricia, and Kehinde Ajose.
IEET affiliate scholar, Rick Searle, spoke on the topic: Algorithmic Governance, via Skype.
Searle defined it as the use of software to provide services that have traditionally been the responsibility of public officials.
And Bryce Lynch, an information security researcher and practitioner, Skyped in to talk on active threats against financial institutions and potential impacts.
In the words of Agbolade Omowole: “We are about to witness a technology explosion and it is important for countries of the world to grow together to ensure that these technologies are affordable and available to everyone regardless of geographical regions and size of bank account.”
Omowole said he looks forward to a time when Nigerians will be among the top scientists in the world.
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