The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has emphasized the importance of organisations responsible for managing citizens’ personal data while utilising artificial intelligence (AI).
Aminu Maida, the executive vice-chairman of NCC. Maida delivered this message in Abuja on Friday during an event marking the 2024 World Consumer Rights Day.
The theme for this year’s commemoration is “Fair and Responsible AI for Consumers.”
Maida, represented by Abraham Oshadami, the executive commissioner for technical services designate, highlighted the significant advancements AI has made, ranging from “voice assistants to recommendation algorithms that suggest what we should watch, read, or buy.” He underscored AI’s role in propelling innovations across various sectors such as healthcare, finance, and transportation.
Despite the positive impact of AI, Maida stressed the necessity of using it responsibly to ensure consumer trust and mitigate potential issues. He raised pertinent ethical questions regarding fairness, bias, and privacy protection in the era of data-driven AI.
Responsible AI usage, according to Maida, entails ethical considerations throughout its development, deployment, and usage phases. This involves addressing concerns like bias, privacy, transparency, and accountability to empower consumers and foster trust while minimising adverse effects.
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To achieve this, AI developers must maintain transparency regarding the data, algorithms, and models employed in AI systems. Such transparency facilitates explanation of AI-driven decisions and rectification of errors to ensure fairness for all individuals, irrespective of their backgrounds, thereby promoting inclusivity and equality.
Protecting citizens’ privacy emerges as a paramount concern in AI implementation. Organisations are urged to handle personal data meticulously, adhering to stringent privacy regulations, as this fosters trust in AI systems.
Maida emphasised the necessity of establishing mechanisms to hold AI systems accountable and elucidate their decisions. Crafting regulations and policies to govern AI deployment, though complex, remains imperative to strike a balance between risk mitigation and innovation promotion while ensuring security and trust.
In light of the burgeoning AI and IoT cybersecurity landscape, Maida advocated for breaking silos and fostering collaboration among academia, industry, government, and society under the quadruple helix innovation model. He underscored the importance of ensuring AI system.
“Although most Legislative and governing Bodies are looking to regulate this technology, there has been continuous struggle to strike the right balance between risk mitigation and stifling innovation, while promoting innovation and ensuring security and trust,” he said.
“In this era that has seen the rise of AI and IoT cybersecurity, it is important to break silos and foster collaboration of the quadruple helix innovation model comprising the academia, the industry, government and society to share ideas. AI developers and regulators have to ensure AI system algorithms consider ethics and inclusivity.”
