Globally recognized scholar and author, Professor Toyin Falola, has underscored the critical role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ethics in safeguarding Africa’s intellectual sovereignty.
He made the call during the 17th Convocation Lecture of Ajayi Crowther University, Oyo, on Thursday. The lecture, titled “The Future of Knowledge”, was held at the Modupe and Folorunso Alakija Faculty of Law Auditorium and formed a key highlight of the university’s convocation program.
Professor Toyin Falola delivering a lecture
Falola noted that while AI offers unprecedented possibilities for knowledge creation, it also carries the risk of deepening Africa’s dependency on Western knowledge systems. “Artificial intelligence provides a novel threshold for the co-creation of knowledge by humans and machines. This system enhances efficiency but puts Africa at risk of epistemic dependency. Therefore, it needs to be complemented by ethical frameworks,” he said.
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Professor Toyin Falola
According to Falola, AI represents both a technological revolution and an epistemic transformation. “Artificial Intelligence stands as a technological revolution and epistemic transformation that continues to shape the way knowledge is conceived, produced, and disseminated. In the present era, artificial intelligence is actively involved in knowledge production; its models can generate literature, produce scientific hypotheses, and even simulate moral discourses. This evolution challenges the traditional assumption that reason, creativity, and ethical judgment are uniquely human attributes. We are witnessing a new era where knowledge itself is becoming a means of learning to think. Therefore, the future of knowledge is not solely determined by human minds, but also through an evolving partnership between humans and artificial intelligence platforms.”Falola highlighted the implications of this partnership. “One of the most significant consequences of this evolution is the blurring of boundaries between human and artificial reasoning. Artificial intelligence now serves as a co-producer of human thoughts, rather than just an assistive mechanism. These machines can assess vast corpora of scientific and cultural data through learning algorithms to detect patterns humans cannot detect without aid. Through this development, the boundary that separates human thoughts and artificial inference is replaced by collaboration. The question that the future generation of thinkers should aim to answer, then, is what does it mean to know in a world where machines also participate in understanding? Without ethical foresight, this collaboration risks replicating historical inequalities—this time, through digital means.”
The scholar emphasized the need for ethical oversight. “Epistemic ethics, therefore, becomes essential. Artificial Intelligence can create academic writings, scientific theories, political manifestos, etc. This raises issues of credit, responsibility, and authenticity. The challenging and intriguing question now is: Who owns the new wave of knowledge produced by Artificial Intelligence? The knowledge produced by AI is owned by whom—the programmer, the user, or the datasets it learns from? Who bears the moral weight of human biases infused in the knowledge generated by AI? Africa could lose control over knowledge, as that terrain has become a site where domination is subtly present in digital frameworks that prioritize Western knowledge while repressing indigenous African understanding. Ultimately, and essentially, Africa and Africans may carry the brunt of the negative weight of AI.”
To counter this, Falola called for the integration of African knowledge into AI systems. “Since machines are now participants in knowledge production, they must be trained in the diverse languages and cultures of African people to address epistemic exclusion and mitigate the risk of a colonial condition, where Africans are understood from a foreign perspective. To this end, decolonization of artificial knowledge is essential for the survival of a just epistemology.”
He stressed the dynamic nature of modern knowledge. “Knowledge becomes a living thing rather than an archive. Knowledge was once stored in books, libraries, and institutions. Today, AI systems constantly update with new data, allowing knowledge to acquire properties of life—it grows, evolves, forgets, and learns. When human reason, machine inference, and cultural memory exist symbiotically, creating an ecosystem, knowledge becomes a continuous conversation.”
Falola also introduced the concept of knowledge singularity. “Knowledge singularity is a possible moment where the acceleration of AI expands knowledge beyond the comprehension capacity of a single human mind. No individual, no matter how learned, can internalize even a fraction of the world’s interconnected datasets, models, and theories. Humans have no choice but to rely on AI as partners in intellectual endeavors, whose duty is to help navigate immense knowledge. However, as attractive as this may be, there is a demand for a moral compass.”
He emphasized the ethical dimension of AI-driven knowledge. “When machines become partners in the creation of human thoughts, the values embedded in this knowledge must feature justice, equity, and pluralism. To pursue efficiency without ethics is to risk a digital apocalypse of meaning, where data overwhelms wisdom and comprehension is replaced by automation. This ethical solution is provided by an African knowledge medium, which is grounded in ethics. Knowledge, when detached from morality, can become dangerous as it transforms from liberation to domination—artificial intelligence integrating pathways for humankind and progress within the community.”
He urged African institutions to develop AI that is “grounded, adaptive, relevant, and functionally appropriate to the foundations of the multivarious African indigenous geopolitics, knowledge, ethics, and languages.” He added that ethically and culturally contextualized AI is essential for Africa to maintain intellectual independence while promoting technological innovation.
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