Experts debate AI’s growing role in improving communication

Illustrative picture of artificial intelligence. Credit: Havard Business School

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From the dawn of human history, people, cultures, and civilisations have developed various forms of communication, which involve the sending or receiving of messages, or the message itself.

Through these methods, there has been an exchange of information and feelings in one form or the other in a way that can lead to understanding.

In the past century, human communication has evolved from the use of raw signals (such as beacons and smoke), to encoded electric signals, to live voice, to packetised digital data (Internet), to mobile/social broadcast, and now to Artificial Intelligence-mediated synthesis and interpretation.

Despite some questions raised about its authenticity and trust, today, AI acts as a communicator through the writing of emails, articles and social posts, and also functions as an interpreter through summaries and sentiment analysis.

From telegraphs to the Internet

Checks by Sunday PUNCH showed that between the 19th and 21st centuries, a series of groundbreaking inventions have been made which have changed the phase of global communication.

Between the 1830s and 1840s, the electric telegraph was developed as the first near-instant electronic messaging system across long distances, which introduced formal encoding and professional messaging services.

This evolved into the use of punched tape and facsimile/early data recording. Later, teleprinter paper tape was utilised for automated and mechanical storage of messages.

In 1876, Alexander Bell developed the telephone and voice telephony, which took coded text to real-time voice, representing a huge expansion of interpersonal communication.

As the calendars scrolled into the 1900s, wireless telegraphy and radio were developed, and this graduated into the use of teleprinters. Later in the mid-20th century, the use of facsimile and early data modems came into popular use.

In the 1960s, satellite communications began relaying television, data, and voice internationally, and this improved into the use of ARPANET and packet switching, which formed the backbone of the Internet and digital communication.

The next two decades saw the use of emails, home computers, and modems, which democratised the creation and exchange of digital content and messaging.

Soon, as the 1990s moved into the 2000s, so did mobile phone calls, commercial cellular networks, and the World Wide Web, which provided access to global information — transforming research, media, and communication channels.

The use of Skype, video services, and a wide adoption of Internet broadband provided high-quality real-time voice, cheaper global calls, and a foundation for streaming and conferencing.

The rise of AI

From the 2000s onward, social media such as MySpace, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, TikTok, etc., platformised social communication, and the concept of content going viral and mediated by algorithms gained ground.

Within the past two decades, the use of smartphones, cloud computing, Application Programming Interfaces, machine learning, deep learning breakthroughs, and multimodal models has combined text, image, and audio previously beyond human imagination, and has dotted the tech landscape.

Recently, too, there has been a dramatic improvement in speech recognition, translation, image generation, and text understanding. Machines have begun to produce and interpret rich human content.

Through large language models and conversational AI, systems can now generate fluent and context-aware texts. They can hold back-and-forth conversations, summarise, translate, code, and assist with creative tasks, thus providing a new interface for information and communication.

With the aid of generative multimodal and deployed AI assistants developed in the 2020s, AI systems have been integrated into messaging apps, search, customer service, and creative tools.

Speaking with Sunday PUNCH, an SEO and AI-for-Business tech expert, Ndubuisi Ubani, lauded the feat of AI quietly taking the place of many old devices that people once relied on.

“Fax machines, pagers, and even landline phones have faded, replaced by apps and platforms powered by AI that translate languages instantly, summarise meetings, and even sense the mood of a conversation.

“Instead of machines carrying our words, algorithms now shape and deliver them across the world. And the future is already here. We’re seeing early signs of communication that blends text, voice, video, and images seamlessly. Imagine meetings where AI avatars translate cultural nuance in real time, or customer service that understands what you need before you say it. These aren’t distant dreams — they’re being tested today.

“From predictive text replacing typewriters to smart collaboration tools reinventing phone calls, AI is not just changing how we talk — it’s redefining what it means to connect. The next decade will bring communication that feels less like using a device and more like tapping into intelligence woven into everyday life,” Ubani said.

Trust and misinformation

In spite of how AI accelerates faster than any technology in modern history, the world still grapples with one fundamental issue: the question of trust.

For a Nigerian scholar, Mathilda Oladimeji, whose career has taken her from bustling Lagos offices to a research lab in Louisiana, this challenge has been reckoned to be deeply human.

Oladimeji’s path to AI research was unusual. Before pursuing her PhD in Information Systems at Louisiana State University, she spent years as Regional Marketing Manager for Intake Education, managing over £560,000 in marketing campaigns across Africa.

She led campaigns in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya for more than 100 partner universities, achieving a 60 per cent increase in student enrollments and driving over 10,000 registrations per event.

“In marketing, if you can’t explain the value clearly, you can’t build trust,” Oladimeji told Sunday PUNCH. “A lot of AI companies forgot this basic rule with AI.”

She explained that in the course of guiding many African students through life-changing education decisions, she learned what builds trust across different cultures, what creates fear, and how communication shapes behaviour.

It was during this time that Oladimeji said she began to ask: What happens when technology, not humans, becomes the gatekeeper? What happens when these systems become invisible and automated?

Now, as a researcher, Shell Summer Fellow, and Oskar Morgenstern Fellow at LSU, she sought to apply those marketing lessons to AI explainability and make AI systems understandable to the people whose lives they affect.

“AI doesn’t have a trust problem; it has a translation problem. Companies spend billions building powerful AI, then can’t explain why it rejected your loan, screened out your job application, or recommended medical treatment,” Oladimeji noted.

Her research, published in major conferences and under review in academic journals, explores how AI can stop behaving like a black box.

“The research investigates how AI can start acting more like a human partner, one that explains itself, acknowledges uncertainty, and gives users confidence rather than confusion.

“The lessons I gained from marketing, education, and human-centred communication now shape my work in AI explainability. I understand that a model’s precision means nothing if users do not trust its output, and I know that transparency must feel intuitive, not overwhelming. So I believe that technology must adapt to people, not the other way around.

Oladimeji further pointed out that as AI becomes embedded in healthcare, education, hiring, finance, and public policy, she sees the same danger emerging everywhere: people are being asked to trust systems they do not understand.

“Patients hesitate to accept AI-driven diagnoses. Students question automated scholarship filters. Employees resist algorithmic evaluations. Communities fear government systems powered by opaque models.

“I call this the ‘billion-dollar blind spot,’ the failure of AI designers to consider the emotional and cognitive realities of human users. My work aims to correct that blind spot by building what I call human-centred intelligence: AI systems that explain their reasoning, allow users to question outputs, and foster trust through communication rather than complexity,” she noted.

Commenting on this, the founder of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Nigeria, Ibadan, Oyo State, Dr Olusola Ayoola, told Sunday PUNCH that there are some critical issues in the way AI continues to shape global communication.

“First is the misinformation problem,” Ayoola said. “AI can now spread false content across language barriers incredibly fast, making it harder to distinguish real from fake. Second is the digital divide — these advanced tools risk widening the gap between those with access and those without, both globally and within Nigeria.

“There’s also the cultural preservation challenge. While AI breaks down language barriers beautifully, we must ensure it doesn’t flatten our diverse communication styles and languages in the process. For Nigeria, especially, preserving our indigenous languages alongside Pidgin and English is crucial.

“On privacy, we need strong safeguards since AI communication tools analyse so much personal data. And finally, bias. AI systems can amplify existing prejudices in how different groups are represented or understood.”

Ayoola urged policymakers to focus on “creating ethical frameworks and ensuring equitable access, while technologists need diverse teams building these tools and must prioritise transparency about how they work.”

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