Robotics, Automation to Increase Global Economy By $16trn

Experts have projected that artificial intelligence (AI) will contribute $16 trillion to the global economy in 2030, adding that the current advancement in automation and robotics is expected to transform the global economy in an exponential manner with AI breaking boundaries and establishing footholds for successful graduates to get jobs in the future.

This was made known by the Academic City University, Ghana, which introduced a degree in Artificial Intelligence to lead the sub-region in technology and innovation education.

This makes the university the first in Africa to offer a degree in AI.

According to the university, the programme will commence in September 2021 to form the initial efforts of its short-term plan to develop new programmes that will invariably push the boundaries of knowledge.

However, the emergence of new technologies is anticipated to lead to the loss of jobs while creating new employment opportunities.

This, the institute said, will leverage on new opportunities needed for preparation as well as learning and developing new skills for those new jobs while assuring that the Academic City is taking the AI agenda into the forefront to nurture and empower African students to lead the continent into the new AI era.

The institute argued that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will equip graduates with knowledge in emerging advances in computational, decision-making sciences and technologies that allow computers and machines to function in an intelligent manner both inaccurate prediction of events and outcomes and in decision-making.

Further to this, the university recently introduced BSc in Biomedical Engineering and BSc. in Robotics Engineering. These new programmes, it said, are deliberately designed to play comfortably at the intersection of AI while providing further impetus to new programmes in Data Analytics and Advanced Autonomous Systems.

Speaking on the new development, the president of Academic City, Prof. Fred McBagonluri, explained that the programme will explore the ethical dimensions of AI, its strategic impact as well as the core programmes and adjacencies such as; robotics, informatics, and data analytics.

By this approach, he pointed out that, “we intend to create a versatile graduate conversant in a broad area of robotics, AI, informatics poised for research in the rapidly evolving fields of Artificial intelligence.”

“Our future industrialisation efforts across the spectrum of key strategic areas such as manufacturing, agriculture, education, healthcare, etc. are pivoted around robotics. Hence, we can no longer wait to join the AI and robotic wagon” he stressed.