Augmenting Humanity with AI Tools - Q1 2026

AI as a Productive Tool

I hope my use of AI reveals some of the beneficial elements of technology against the concerns that this development might deplete, displace, or delete the significance of our humanity in the daily narrative of human living.

For me, AI is a tool, helping my productivity at work and augmenting other skill areas as a timesaving resource that can be deployed for various activities. For instance, I would explain an issue or a scenario to an AI chatbot and ask if it had any ideas towards troubleshooting an incident or a problem.

AI would provide knowledge and background on the issue before suggesting several steps to follow towards a resolution. The kind of engagement I have, which is known as prompt engineering, is casually conversational and iterative.

At times, I might even ask AI to combine all my previous prompts in a conversation thread into a comprehensive prompt, whilst taking cognisance of other factors I may not have considered before.

Refining My Writing Voice

Besides that, I use AI as a proofreader of my blogs, adjusting for punctuation, spelling, grammar, structure, and flow of thought processes without losing my voice, the context, or the intent.

All this includes asking for feedback and ideas to extend the conversation in future writings.

AI-Generated Podcasts: A Revelation

However, where I have gained the most fascination with AI is in the use of AI-generated podcasts based on the blogs I have written in 2026. Using the Audio Overview of Google's NotebookLM, I have created podcasts discussing each individual blog with an in-depth conversation between two agents.

To garner a more thematic review, I have also had podcasts made covering the range of blogs written in each month of 2026. For the 21 blogs published in January, there is a one-hour podcast discussion, and for the 13 blogs written in each of February and March, the podcasts are under 45 minutes.

I am impressed by how AI creates a narrative arc that connects the dots between my blogs in ways I never realised were linked. It can only help me understand how to better express myself.

Whilst there are minor, aesthetic errors of comprehension (such as AI thinking I had radiotherapy in Cape Town or tea with my mother in Pinelands, from the January and March podcasts respectively), I see no need to redo them to eliminate those infractions.

Acknowledging AI's Limitations

AI can be inaccurate, and what we must not do is ignore these errors but address them through review, acknowledgement, then notification or correction where possible.

There are many other ends to which I deploy AI mechanics, but the ones mentioned here are the standout attributions for which I am grateful.

AI is giving my staid two-decade-old blog a stake in multimedia interaction; I can only hope there are readers and listeners with a long enough attention span to enjoy the experience and comment with their views.

Thank you.

An AI discussion podcast
on blogs published in January 2026
Chronicles of Resilience and Reflection

An AI discussion podcast
on blogs published in February 2026
Dignity, Deserts, and the Prostate Chronicles

An AI discussion podcast
on blogs published in March 2026 
Observations on Identity, Transit, and Digital Modernisation

By unexpected determination

Willing and unable

For weeks, I was concerned for my lack of productivity, self-development somewhat moribund and the firefighting activities going on at work not advancing any knowledge or insight. Things appeared to be stagnant as motivation faded into lethargy.

At other times, I would have tried to gird myself into focusing on achieving something, but there isn’t enough going on for that kind of realignment. However, just after watching the church service on television on Sunday, I decided to read through some documentation I downloaded during the last week to see if there was some information to guide me through linking my home environment to the cloud.

Learning by doing

Pieces of work left unfinished in snatches of time had begun to come together. After finding the chapter that could help me through, I began the process of sorting out the hybrid cloud setup, encountering issues that needed resolution, and learning as each issue got solved. A few missteps, a near catastrophe deftly recovered.

Soon, the basics were done with the essential synchronisation between my home test environment and my personal company cloud environment. The next day, I started on fixing the management components on systems I did not cater that well for as a unit. Having completed that, I continued with the cloud integration process, gaining more insight.

Knowledge all ways

Back at work also, some seemingly intractable problems revealed much more about the root cause in the myriad logs we need to pore through to find a resolution. The breakthrough there was quite good. Just as at home, each day, I was trying something new out for a couple of hours and recording my findings on OneNote.

It would appear that much has been accomplished this week with a good crossover of knowledge elements between work and home. I feel quite happy with this and it means I can move on to the next tranche of experiments and testing. I guess that is how confidence built and expertise is acquired.

Thought Picnic: In the days of useful ideas

Hour after hour

The days come and go, 24 hours ticking by with the concern whether much has been done or achieved. How minutes turn into hours as a perpetual movement of the ever-present that was the future in the last minute remains both the mundane and a mystery.

That passage of time is captured in the Today, the Thomas Carlyle poem that is also in the Anglican Hymnal, but I think I first heard it in primary school and that school in Bukuru, Jos was not religious at all. [Poetry Foundation - Today, Thomas Carlyle] [Hymnary – So here hath been dawning]

So here hath been dawning
Another blue Day:
Think wilt thou let it
Slip useless away.

Out of Eternity
This new Day is born;
Into Eternity,
At night, will return.

Behold it aforetime
No eye ever did:
So soon it forever
From all eyes is hid.

Here hath been dawning
Another blue Day:
Think wilt thou let it
Slip useless away.

Slipping out of done

That is my enduring fear, the many days that I probably, possible, inadvertently, deliberately, or lazily allowed to slip useless away, with no ability to redeem my time apart from working in the hope that the newly allotted day from eternity slips into the eternal past with a mark of achievement and the fulfilment of purpose.

In my frail and errant humanity, other weaknesses emerge, desires I should tamp down, ambitions I should aerate and allow to find the winds of inspiration and determination to execute. I have been thinking lately where ideas come from, the wellspring of thoughts that can be used to change things, make things, see things, do things, to the benefit of both myself and humanity.

Growing ideas

I have toyed with the idea of returning to school, I have learnt a lot in a structured environment as well as build new networks for connections, projects and friendships. I need to read more accessing diverse topics to broaden the spectrum of my ideas landscape. Maybe, I try too hard when I should ease myself into a comfortable use of my mind.

There are no easy answers, but one thing I know is my honeymoon with procrastination must end, my dalliance with good intentions that rarely proceeds beyond that is unhealthy, I need to regain the joy of adventure in learning and practice, I yearn for a daily record of the useful with the knowledge that next would be better. Somewhere in there is both the joy of living and the inerrant pursuit of happiness.

Just too many days of holiday in Nigeria

Naijablog is my thinking window on Nigeria

I got involved in a discussion on my favourite blog Naijablog which is run by an Englishman living in Nigeria with his beautiful Nigerian wife.

He remonstrated about unannounced holidays and the way one religious holiday seems to be a holiday for all religions.

This is true, because extended families are usually comprised of different religious affiliations; it is of kindred importance than religious holidays do not depend on the individual's religion.

Then other commentators went on to talk about work and holidays in the West, productivity, relaxing and getting industry to make Nigeria thrive.

After Miss Anonymous said this, “We'll keep wracking our brains. BUT, who will implement them?” My reply appears below.

Dear Miss Anonymous

I am sorry to sit on the fence on this one.

24 years ago, I returned home from a student's protest when the NITEL building was burning down and President Shagari jetted over the flames to India to receive a doctorate degree, just weeks after they announced Indian degrees were inferior to Nigerian ones.

My father took me aside and said, there was a time Nigeria was worth dying for, now, it is everyman to his own.

My honest accountant father though quite successful never got entrenched in corporate settings because he always thwarted attempts to defraud companies where he was CFO.

Evil bedevils the good

Rather than be honoured or rewarded, he received death threats, he did the smart thing then and branched out into farming with moderate success. Now, close to being a septuagenarian he is back with the accountancy he loved.

Nigeria, no doubt has promise and potential, but many of us also got our fingers burnt trying to speak up for probity, prudence and forthrightness.

Charred fingers and frustrated times

I participated in student union politics in the 80's and had to contend with demigod lecturers who wasted our years there.

I went into consultancy, each time I presented a bill; someone wanted a cut to the extent that I had to tell he that my bill was not negotiable, if he was desirous of payback he had to resolve that without my input.

This is apart from the fact that he had nothing to do with my securing the opportunity, nor did he contribute in anyway to help get the work done.

A bale of money to bail out

Once also, I had to sign a bail form for my employees stating I had not paid anything for their release, having paid a hefty sum under the counter to the police.

This again after my business partner corralled all everyone in the holding company into detention on the suspicion that some other employee from a different company has been stealing company property.

He did not even have the courtesy to inform me of that situation.

Nigeria – a dream I once had

The catalogue of experiences of almost 20 years of sojourn in Nigeria would mark anyone, I had my share.

Nigeria is probably a radically changed place from my own experiences and things are probably better, but it would take some convincing to prise me out of the comfort of Europe to prospect in Nigeria for anything.

Meanwhile, you will have my support advisory and international as hopefully the vision I had of Nigeria in the 70s.

In my way, I died for Nigeria once; I would not hurt one single hair of my bald head again.

When to close your year

Counting the years

One has had the advantage of being able to close ones working year, the weekend either before ones birthday or just at ones birthday. When one was self-employed, one had no problems making that decision and sticking to it. One used to have the luxury of 10 weeks holiday a year and still declare it a good and profitable year.

However, last year, ones work status changed and one became a salaried permanent employee with a fixed number of holidays amounting to five, each bean-counted on pink or green cards through out the year.

In these circumstances, one becomes rather more perceptive at selecting what holidays to take off allowing enough days to close the year as one is accustomed to doing. Having no particular allowance for time off in lieu of extra hours, days or weeks worked, five weeks does not amount to much a year.

In Europe, we do place more premiums on holidays than the Americans. Though they seem to have had this unassailable improvement in productivity over the last few decades, one's candid, view is "They who do not know how to work can never know how to play".

The point of high productivity without ample time off amounts to just two weeks a year is absurd. One would think the whole purpose of high productivity is to have more time off to be leisurely having achieved whatever goals, aims, purposes or plans.

Anyway, looking at the working year of 2003 - we started in a flux of change, managing infrastructure we had aggressively taken over the previous November and handing over to the new team brought in to ensure that the future became just as we had mapped it out.

Experiences

One can refer to some issues that became highlights of the year.

• The remnant after the November retrenchment were systematically deprived of privileges to perform functions they were once managers of and they did not help issue with their bickering about rights - a failure of their management to inform them of their drastically changed circumstances.
• The major deployment and upgrade of our backend and front-end CRM solution - this was an uphill task of educating the backend teams of full-cycle deployment; the logic being, what you roll out on the server is not complete till the end-user confirms that it all works. Broadening the horizons of such personnel to the realities that the user is the linchpin makes all the difference.
• The client operating system upgrade to Microsoft Windows XP - a classic tale of how not to run a project. One must state here that in conversation with one of the project managers involved; the project did run as planned, only that the whole system was short-circuited by irrational management targets that preferred immediate implementation to reasoned and ordered assessments leading to working solutions at the point of presentation.
  We never learnt the lessons throughout the whole year.
• Knowledge unravelling the effectiveness of our solutions integrators, when we repackaged all their applications for the new operating system. The sharp practices of shoddy coding that went unnoticed when deployed to Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 were laid bare in Microsoft Windows XP. Polish up your act, you are failing dreadfully, still.
• Are you trying to absolve yourself from thanks for a job well done? One of the many questions or rather classic statements one made in the year. This after a successful client deployment even the local staff could not bring themselves to acknowledge that success.
• A number of projects that required weekend work also brought to light some of the inconsiderate practises that involved petty purveyors of power mortgaging our weekends without due consultation. In all the cases we were involved, where no one had the courtesy to seek our consent and availability, we successfully rescheduled for our convenience. The morale being, nothing is set in stone, even if the milestones are in the project plan.
• Project managers came up with ingenious ideas that made technical prerequisites obsolete in favour of pressing issues, which eventually would lead to dealing with those prerequisites. All doom for the department was forecast if we flunked the deadlines. Eventually, reality got the better of the whole situation we had two rescheduled deadlines within a week. One could never bring oneself to say, "I told you so", nay, never said I.
• We delivered time and time again, albeit with regular but temporary setbacks driven by the quest to PowerPoint [Sorry for using this as a verb] all activity. We had to be like them, the only difference being we did our jobs and so covered our arses, they just covered their arses and gave us grief - customer demands, uncertainty, bungling, accusation, problems and at times unprofessionalism - NEVER!

We had a good year, full of work, new experiences and many lessons, hopefully properly learnt for the New Year.

Take time to count the cost, survey the availability of resources and set your target dates with achievable realism.

One is ashamed that in many cases we could not deliver on promised time because we were driven by unrealistic projections with no bearing to existing volume of work and priorities.

The hopes and fears of all the years* which are met at Christmas, should give rise to new purposes to do better in the year 2004. It has been great working with all my colleagues whom I respect, even those who flinch at being called gentlemen and deserted me at lunchtime. One acknowledges your apologies, but you had to get a mention.

* O! Little town of Bethlehem