By Chinenye Anuforo
The Consumer Advocacy and Empowerment Foundation (CADEF) has called for the establishment of a strong data security and Artificial Intelligence (AI) policy to avoid illegal data mining.
Executive director of CADEF, Prof. Chiso Ndukwe-Okafor, made the call at a webinar to commemorate the 2024 World Consumer Rights Day.
The 2024 World Consumer Rights Day has the theme “Fair and Responsible Use of AI’’.
It is targeted at growing the impact of AI on humans and the need to ensure that it respects consumer rights.
“AI deals with collection of people’s data for different purposes, and there is need for us to ensure that any policy or legislation we are coming up with, has the voice of the consumer.
“At present, we do not have substantial legislation on data security and AI that will ensure that people’s data are not collected for illegal purposes,’’ she said.
She urged that people should be careful of their activities on the internet, saying that cyber criminals leveraged on online activities’ tipoffs to harvest data.
Mr Suleiman Isah, Commissioner, Ministry of Communications, Technology and Digital Economy, Niger State, on his own part said that data systems should be adequately monitored.
Isah said that there was need to enlighten Nigerians on the dangers of indiscriminate provision of data online.
He pointed out that those providing data online could be unaware of what organisations or other people, who had access to their data, would use the data for.
“We need to develop end-to-end encryption on our data systems, regulate individual systems that form building blocks of AI.
“Over 90 per cent of what we do online is dependent on the people, while AI is just 10 per cent; so, awareness is key for the ethical use of AI,’’ Isah said.
He described Nigerians as talented people, whose talents should be channelled in the right direction.
“Today in Nigeria, a lot of youths are known for hacking banks; these people can be engaged positively,” he said.
According to the commissioner, such engagement would change such youths from hackers to penetration testers.
“By engaging them as penetration testers, you properly pay them and avoid the unethical use of AI,’’ he said.
Mr David Mbah, a representative of Strategic Business Techspace, said that ensuring consumer rights in the use of AI required fairness, accountability, transparency, security and data protection, among others.
Mbah added that it was important for companies deploying AI to be aware of its challenges and benefits and build firewalls to mitigate its pitfalls.