Artificial intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere: it recommends the music we listen to, the series we watch and what we read. It responds to every online search, to our orders at home and to those of governments, companies and all kinds of organizations. You can see, read, hear, and respond. He cleans the floor as well as writes news, translates texts, recommends business strategies or a good diet, analyzes our health, or assists in the management or selection of human resources.

Artificial intelligence learns from us to improve itself.

But what is Artificial Intelligence?

Almost without realizing it, AI has been integrated into our daily lives. We carry it in our pockets, on our screens. We have it at home, at school, at work and even in our leisure plans; it is in the service sector, in industry and in agriculture. With more or less success, it shows its weapons on the road to personalization in sectors such as medicine, education and even beauty and, in general, consumption. It also pursues the optimization, whether of traffic, supply chain, crops; of mental and physical business performance. He is even capable of composing music or generating artistic creations.

For our trustee Wilfried Vanhonacker : “AI and big data together are not only giving rise to the largest emerging market to date, but going far beyond. Most industries will fundamentally change. All business processes will be intelligent.”

Business management and optimization, marketing and advertising, health and wellness, mobility, finance along with the legal and police fields, logistics and work are the areas of application of AI highlighted by the experts gathered at the Future Trends Forum.

When implementing and using any technology, its potential benefits and risks must be considered. Artificial intelligence is one of the technologies that presents the most social and ethical challenges. All applications of Artificial Intelligence have associated benefits, but along with them, there are also some negative effects, or at the very least, risks and challenges in their implementation.

There are two positions on how far AI can develop at a technical level: one optimistic and the other skeptical.

The first brings together the tech super optimists who talk about artificial super intelligence that could become more powerful than anything this planet has ever seen and that will be an existential challenge for humanity as a species.

In this current we find the philosopher Nick Bostrom, founding director of the Institute for the Future of Humanity at the University of Oxford, Stephen Hawking or Elon Musk, among others.

The second current is that of the skeptics, who do not trust that ultra-intelligent machines will affect us so much. In this current we find Professor Luciano Floridi, director of the Laboratory for Digital Ethics at the University of Oxford, who argues that what really matters in the development of intelligent technologies is how we conceive of ourselves, our interactions and our environment, to define the design of these technologies.

From the analysis of this trend, the experts of the Future Trends Forum have outlined the following recommendations for the correct development of artificial intelligence:

1. The human must be at the center and always be the priority.

2. Collaboration between people and machines is essential.

3. It is vital for each sector in each sphere (public and private) to know how AI can transform its capabilities and optimize its processes or transform them.

4. While taking advantage of the possibilities of AI, its risks must be anticipated and prevented. Some recommendations:

– Addressing biases;

-Accountability;

– more understandable privacy policies;

– develop explainable algorithms;

– debate, decision-making and public oversight;

– Educate in, with and about AI;

– expand and enforce digital rights;

– To assign due responsibility to companies;

– explore new ways of redistributing wealth and data ownership,

– and to enhance the development of AI for social good.