Updates
on Nigerian born Inventors: Celebrating the Invention of Koniku Kore
In the last quarter of 2016 up to Friday,
February 17, 2017, I published 5-series article titled “Nigerian Born
Investors, their Inventions, Challenges and Opportunities. In the article, I
stated that the list of Nigerian inventors and their inventions couldn’t be
exhaustive. A huge country like Nigeria with a deep-rooted diversity and
exponential increase in population, invention to survive daily challenges of
life is the order of the day. Necessity makes people to think deeply on how to
address their problems, constraints and threats against their living condition.
Necessity is the major factor making Nigeria to churn out inventors in
multitude. Ordinarily, Nigerians are naturally gifted with above average level
of ingenuity, hard work and perseverance, when added to the prevailing
difficult situation of their environment; the result is multitude of inventors.
Invention is about coming up with a great idea, about turning the idea into a
product, about making the product workable and making people to be aware about
the workable product. The product should not only be acceptable by the people
but should be sellable to recoup the cost of putting it on the market with a
huge profit margin. Nigerian inventors have shown many workable products
without moving to the next level of making people to be aware of their
products. They are yet to make their products sellable, needless of making
profit. Invention is a difficult
process, a time consuming event and often challenging and exhaustive to the
inventors. Many inventors are disappointed after struggling for years with
ideas they couldn't make to work. Today, some inventors have abandoned their
great ideas out of frustration.
My previous on this subject article brought
out the potential of Nigeria to lead the African continent in technological
breakthroughs with her uncountable born inventors at home and abroad. In these
inventors, lie the unquantifiable opportunities to make Nigeria excel in
several human endeavors. These opportunities have potential to make Nigeria
great among the comity of nations. However, potential is like a large fertile
farm with good soil and abandoned water, without cultivation, weeds and
dangerous reptiles will cover the farm, which must be avoided.
The article can be accessed: . In the last two years, what are the
updates on Nigerian born inventors, their inventions, opportunities and
challenges?
There are several inventions made by
Nigerians at home and abroad. Some of the inventions have been in existence
longtime ago but are recently coming to lime light while few others were newly
made. In the last two years, one invention that came to limelight, capable of
making the seemingly ‘impossible’ possible in the global technological
revolution is KONIKU KORE.
Koniku Kore is a giant invention of the 21st
century, it is a device, which can fuse live neurons from mice stem cells into
a silicon chip invented by a USA based Nigerian, Oshi Agabi. The device is a
next generation neuro computing platform that can provide uses in security,
military and agriculture. An example would be that a single neuro-chip device could
sniff out explosives without even seeing it. The creation of this seemingly
synthetic brain is a breakthrough combination of robotics, neuro-biology,
computing and bioengineering. The technology is also opened to a community of
developers, with the potential to create add-ons. This means that the device,
in addition its primary functions will serve as a platform for other
application developers to use. Koninku Kore is an application for real-world
issues such as detecting illness and terrorism threats and it offers a glimpse
into how biology can be integrated into technology, and ultimately how the
human brain can help technological advancements.
The Koniku Kore technology attracted media blitz
with BBC and CNN leading in “breaking the news” during TEDGlobal Conference in
August 2017 in Tanzania. The world is amazingly seeing a technology, which has
created computer with artificial intelligence modeled on the exactness of the
human brain. Whereas computer is better than human brain at complex mathematical
equations, there are many cognitive functions where the brain is much better.
Thus, making a computer to recognize smells would require colossal amounts of
computational power, energy and high intellectual thinking.
Koniku Kore is an amalgam of living neurons
and silicon, with olfactory capabilities — basically sensors that can detect
and recognize smells. The Nigerian born inventor, Oshi Agabi proclaimed before
the international journalists at the conference, "You can give the neurons
instructions about what to do - in our case we tell it to provide a receptor
that can detect explosives." He envisages a future where such devices can
be discreetly used at various points in airports, eliminating the need for
queues to get through airport security. Instead of joining line for endless
search at the airports, people will just be allowed to pass while the
neurons-silicon computer clear or unclear them through smell. The same computer
can be used for bomb detection.
Oshi Agabi said: "We merged synthetic
neurobiology with traditional silicon technology with the goal of fixing urgent
real world problems." Adding that the “technology could one day
revolutionize airport security, enabling travelers to walk from their car directly
to the aircraft." This will certainly address "One of the problems
that plagues us right now is security,"
In an exclusive interview with CNN, Agabi
said “Explosives have particles and smells coming off the individual and with
our device you can tell, without requiring line of sight or contact, you can
scan them at the time at a place of your own choosing and you can get into an
aircraft and go about your business."
Additionally, Koniku Kore could be used to
detect illness by sensing markers of a disease in the air molecules that a patient
gives off. The invention could also be used to sniff out illnesses in the same
way dogs can detect cancerous cells via smells. "In the same way that a
dog is able to detect if someone has prostate cancer, the real question we ask
is 'how does a dog do it?' We can clone that process on our chip, so yes in the
same way that a dog can detect diseases or explosives at an airport, it's a
sensory system, that is essentially what we recreate in our chip," Agabi
says.
Koniku
Kore is a major indicator expressing advances in neuroscience; bioengineering
and computer science, bringing out in-depth knowledge on how the human brain
works allowing the scientists mimic brain system. This advancement fuels the development of
neuro-technology - devices that aim to mold the brain into computers. Before
this invention, much of the current work was aimed at improving brain function,
particularly for those with brain-related injuries or diseases.
Koniku means 'immortal' in the Yoruba
language, one of the three most populous languages in Nigeria. The Koniku
project started in 2015 and has already raised $8 million in revenue in 2017 as
reported during the unveil of the project by its founder Agabi who stated that
“we believe quite strongly that it's going to be run with biological brains
that are made with synthetic biological neurons. That is the declared intention
of our company: to build a brain."
Addressing ethical concerns and
implications of creating humanoid devices, Agabi says: "I think it's
unethical not to deploy any resources we have to fight terrorism. It is the
urgent problem that we face as a species", adding, "That's not to say
that we shouldn't be careful of bio-integrity".
Oshi Agabi was born and grew up in the
suburb of Surulere in Lagos, Nigeria and obtained a Bachelors degree in Physics
from University of Lagos. He went on to do further studies in physics and
neuroscience in Sweden and Switzerland.
"One of the things growing up in Lagos
imparts in you is grit," he says. "Lagos is a place that demands
grit. Growing up there gave me an unconventional way of always looking at
problems."
The world has to celebrate Koniku
technology that aims to address two critical human challenges: security and
cancer, a terminal disease by creating a device capable of detecting explosives
and cancer cells. The inventions, like several other inventions made by
Nigerians abroad, the Jelanis, Mohammed Bah Abbas and others are image booster
for the country and the authority should provide unflinching support to these
inventions.
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