Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work: Recent Graduates’ Perspective

Abstract

Recent technological developments suggest that sooner or later, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will become an indispensable technology. With  the developed countries leading in the development and deployment of AI, it is therefore a plausible claim that students and recent  graduates of schools in the Global North may be familiar with the technology. For Africa, this is unclear. This paper therefore assesses the  level of fresh graduates’ awareness and their level of preparedness for prospects, issues and possible threat that AI may pose in their  future work life. Specifically, the project profiles students according to their current level of AI understanding, assesses students’ perception of its potential threat and assesses their level of preparedness to use the technology. A total of 112 recent graduates from  various Nigerian tertiary institutions serving in the mandatory National Youths’ Service Corps (NYSC) were randomly selected to respond  to fill the survey. Descriptive Statistics and Multinomial Logit Model were analytical techniques. Results show that most of the graduates  are essentially ignorant or unsure of the threat of AI to their lives and especially for the foreseeable future. These categories of graduates  are within the ranks of class lower than First Class. Further, almost all the graduates are unaware of any policy concerns of the  government on ICT and AI. Nevertheless, almost all of them were willing to pay to learn about AI. The apparent ignorance of the  potentials – positive or negative – of AI among the graduates in the case study country of Nigeria reveals a deficiency in curricula and  highlights the need for a more robust policy response from government. The study raises significant concerns and questions about not  only the currency of higher education curricula in Nigeria, but also in Africa broadly, in addition to young people’ s readiness to survive  and thrive in the digital future of work