I am writing this as the events of that day keep fading away but I find the incident relevant to what is happening today, almost a decade later.
In 2017 I was a 2nd year electrical and electronics engineering student at Kenyatta university and there was an Intel supported tech club. I cannot recall its name now but back then I was curious to learn about AI and that day's session was about it. I can still remember being confused by the word subset as it was used 'AI is a subset of machine learning'. Blame my basic math skillset at the time.
It was a Friday afternoon when most of these tech student clubs took
place and I remember as I entered the event room at Chandaria Innovation Complex I saw an unfamiliar face. Unfortunately tech clubs are usually frequented by a few individuals and you become familiar with those faces and can easily recognise a new face. It was a guy in some red shirt seated at the front table and he had arrived quite early.He was actually one of the first people in, I should know cause I usually arrive early.
But it was not a big surprise since the event had been widely advertised.
I went and sat at the back left desk and was joined by some of my friends. One of them I remember , an IT student wanted to join Andela so passionately, he even told me he was planning to go to Rwanda as they were not recruiting in Kenya at the moment.
As the Intel student ambassador began going through the slides, the new guy abruptly stood up. I was quite in shock even thinking it is a prank. He started speaking loudly, with religious zeal, saying how we were trying to play god by creating artificial intelligence. That was the gist of it I can not recall all that he said but his final action stuck with me. He said category that to show his seriousness about
his case against AI he would leave his mobile phone and walk out. And he actually did that and when the meeting was over the phone was still on the desk, from my blurry memory it was a feature phone. But the commitment to such an act astonished me. I don't know if he ever came back for it.
After he left the meeting was a bit awkward for a while since we did not know what actually happened. But the ambassador continued with his presentation calmly , showing us interesting things that could be done by AI models. One of the fun toy applications was having
some emoji smile or frown depending on how you facial expression was.
What followed was a discussion about the ramification about this forth coming technology. Looking back we discussed this topic thinking that we were immune from this technology, job wise,
since we were technologically inclined people. We thought that like the robots it would affect physical labour mostly as previous tech had done.
I remember this lady who had quite a blunt conclusion when she was answering the question on what people who would be laid off due to AI should do. She said they should skill up and join our profession. I remember agreeing with this sentiment and feeling safe that I would not be affected.
The events of that day keep coming back to me almost a decade later. Maybe because some days I feel anti-AI too and can't help but recall the anti-AI activist I came across back in 2017 and who at the time I thought was a lunatic.
