I do not know the exact year that AI was invented. I have done a vast research on this for a certain period of time and the findings I have gotten do not seem to correspond. The information on the internet, too, are inconsistent with each other.
I have even stretched my research to asking AI itself the year it was invented and the response that AI gave me was: “Artificial intelligence (AI) has a rich history, and its development spans several decades.
While it is difficult to pinpoint an exact year of invention, I can provide you with some key milestones…..” Afterwards, it went ahead to give details about the evolution it has gone through for many decades.
I don’t know when it arrived Africa either, but as a Nigerian, I got to know about AI, the wonders it can perform, and how rich it is in knowledge as an undergraduate from a friend of mine who was and is still a keen researcher. That was during my third year in the university.
I am not implying that was when it came to Nigeria, definitely not. I know it came quite earlier than that, it was I who did not stay current and updated on the technological trends of my time.
I was so happy about the discovery of artificial intelligence because of the great assistance it helped in accelerating my research work. As a matter of fact, that was the level I had the best result throughout my time as an undergraduate.
As I literature student, AI helped me greatly in analyzing literature texts in a way that made me understand them better. My performance in literature courses, most especially, greatly improved because of how zealous I was about research, having AI applications such as ChatGPT, Bard, etc, at my disposal.
The effects of over reliance on artificial intelligence by some students.
I have been very close to one of my lecturers who taught me while I was in the university because, overtime, I was able to build a good relationship with him.
As a result of how close we are, he does not only share with me the weird experiences he has been having with students on their uses of AI, sometimes he allows me have access to their marked scripts.
It is very sad that most students have abused the use of artificial intelligent. Going through the already marked students’ assignment, I discovered that a lot of students did not even know how they can and for what purpose AI should be used for in the academic world. (Here, in the Nigerian academic structure, lecturers mandate students to do exploration on a particular topic, which is often referred to as an assignment. This is usually the students’ continuous assessment).
Many times as I assess those assignments, I see students doing a copy and paste work, without any contribution from them, they would not even change the AI language, at least. All they do is to go to any AI app and put in the question, and whatever result it gives, they simply copy, paste and submit.
The Consequence?
I read on Facebook a few days ago how a reputable researcher bemoaned how over reliance on AI has weakened the mental capacity of most PhD holders and I couldn’t agree more to it. These days, there are a lot of academic doctors who cannot write a letter on their own without asking AI to do for them. I am not saying that using AI for academic purposes is bad, I am only saying that when we delegate to AI what we were once capable of doing, it will plunge us into mental laziness.