Balancing rapid technological growth with robust guardrails has become the defining challenge of the tech ecosystem, as Nigeria accelerates its adoption of Artificial Intelligence, Debola Ibiyode, the Founder and CEO of CarbonAI has cautioned.
Speaking in Lagos at the AI Summit 2026 in Lagos, Ibiyode, stated that sustainable economic growth from AI can only be unlocked through a framework of Responsible AI and a new global and local approach she terms AI Diplomacy.
Addressing the summit’s theme, ‘The AI Conversation – Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Nigeria: Balancing Regulation and Innovation’, Ibiyode challenged the notion that regulation acts as a brake on economic progress. Instead, she argued that without clear rules, the trust required for commercial success will collapse.
“Innovation without regulation is a risk, and regulation in itself without innovation is stagnation. We should apply AI for economic growth. However, at some point, without regulation, economic growth will not happen because there will not be profitability. If we do not apply AI responsibly, we cannot profit from it,” she argued further.
Drawing from her experience leading Carbon AI, a sustainability AI platform built for the carbon market, Ibiyode highlighted that large corporate clients are increasingly hesitant to adopt AI tools without strict data protections.
“As we scale to large corporate clients, the questions we get are: ‘How can I trust your model? What are the regulations that protect my customer or my employee using your model?’ There is a critical trust element right now, and only regulation can deliver that peace of mind. Corporations want to know the traceability of the model and demand that we explain how the AI arrived at its answers.”
Ibiyode noted that while foundational AI algorithms and deep learning techniques have existed for years, the explosion of Generative AI, driven by transformers and advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) has created an urgent need for guardrails against human nature.
“As humans, we know how to do one thing well: to always seek the negative part of a good thing. We need to put regulations in place so citizens are protected from threats like deepfakes,” she added.
Meanwhile, to successfully navigate this era, the Carbon AI founder introduced a structural framework to balance competing ecosystem needs by introducing the concept of “AI Diplomacy” as the missing link. In this framework, she explained that innovation drives economic growth and showcases the capabilities that AI can achieve.
Concurrently, regulation provides the baseline security and protection for users and enterprise data, even as AI Diplomacy secures national and corporate sovereignty, giving stakeholders control over how local data is collected, utilized, and modeled.
“AI diplomacy must happen at both the national level and the corporate level. Everyone must be involved in the conversation about what the regulation should entail and how it can be objectively and practically implemented to protect users. Innovation brings growth and regulation gives security, but AI diplomacy is what will actually give us sovereignty over our tools and our data,” she emphasized.