Professor Olukemi Iyabode Lawanson, professor of Labour Economics and Human Resource Management at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), has tasked the government at all levels with formulating and implementing policies that will promote the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the educational, industrial, and political spheres of the nation’s economy.
Lawanson gave the charge at the UNILAG’s 7th Inaugural Lecture of the 2024/2025 Academic Session on Wednesday, February 19, 2025, at the tertiary institution premises.
The scholar who delivered her lecture titled ‘To Everything There is a Season: The Perspective of a Labor Economist harped on the need for the federal, state and local governments to ensure that all educational institutions, from elementary to tertiary, are repositioned and well equipped to handle the automation that comes with Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The lecture opened up narratives and discussions on AI’s ravaging and undeniable intrusion, especially in professions such as banking and financial services, health care, retail and e-commerce, telecommunications, security, and automotive industries.
She noted that this development is responsible for the surge in the demand for ‘AI Engineers and Machine Learning Specialists’ as indicated on the World Economic Forum’s list of sought-after jobs.
Lawanson took the audience through the history and evolution of human resource management, its connection with personnel management and how AI has changed the landscape while shaping the future of personnel and human resources management.
She highlighted several professions AI/Technology will overrun, including customer service representatives, front desk officers/receptionists, accountants/bookkeepers, warehouse workers, research analysts, and bookkeeping clerks.
Prof Kemi Lawanson equally outlined professions that cannot be taken over by AI/Technology, including Human Resource Management, Computer system analysts, Teachers, Sportsmen, Judges/Lawyers, Writers, Creatives, Clergy, Politicians, and Health Care professionals.
While stressing the need for tertiary institutions to develop course content that will cater to both technical and ethical aspects of AI, the Professor of Labour Economics/Human Resource Management suggested Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Robotics, Data Science, AI Ethics, and AI In Business, Computer Vision and Generative AI should be factored into school curricula due to their potential impacts in shaping the future of Human Resource Management.
The UNILAG also buttressed the need for interest in developing Workplace AI Skills, which include IT Project Management, Generative AI Modelling, Emotional Intelligence, and Model tuning. According to Prof Lawanson, these abilities will help position newly trained graduates and existing workers for the fast-approaching future of work.
As a road map for the future of work, which she said is IT-dependent, Prof Lawanson tasked all tiers of government to establish a comprehensive AI policy for education, provide AI research grants, invest in AI infrastructure, encourage AI skills development, and promote AI governance and ethics.
Lawanson encouraged academics to leverage AI for administrative tasks, employ AI-powered adaptive learning platforms to provide students with personalised content and utilise AI to present students with personalised challenges and feedback that stimulate critical thinking and foster social-emotional learning.
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