On June 6, at the headquarters of the Chamber of Commerce, the Consular Corps of Bilbao organized, as part of the activities for its centenary and with the sponsorship of Devol, the conference AI applications and their effects on competitiveness, employment and diplomacy.
One of the first ideas raised in the talk held by Miguel Ángel Blanco, Innovation Director of Devol, José Miguel Zaldo, Industrial Engineer, PhD in Economics and Honorary Consul of Morocco, and Pedro Álvarez Martínez, General Manager of FSH and specialist in AI, Virtual Reality and Metaverse, was that Artificial Intelligence has been with us for years.
Although in recent months it seems that AI has been making headlines and has been the focus of media attention, the truth is that this is a race that has been developing for years: from systems that run on our cell phones to chatbots that help with customer service.
After José Miguel Zaldo‘s introduction, the floor was given to Miguel Ángel Blanco, who explained how Artificial Intelligence is becoming an ally when it comes to automating processes in the company.
Thanks to machine learning and new technologies at the service of citizens, Blanco explained how, from Devol, they are able to connect AI services from companies like Amazon to automated processes through RPA to achieve greater efficiency and productivity. Thanks to these links with Artificial Intelligence, it is possible to add extra benefits to those already provided by process automation..
In Pedro Álvarez‘s turn, this AI expert described the evolution that Artificial Intelligence has undergone in the last twenty years, with models that are growing and improving faster and faster, exponentially..
In his speech, Alvarez presented several examples of how Artificial Intelligence is reaching increasingly surprising milestones, such as generating a conversation totally indistinguishable from the one we would have with a human, generating images and videos with a quality never seen before, or the possibility it offers when assisting people in problem solving.
In his words, AI will be an unprecedented breakthrough. He also took care to banish the idea of an apocalyptic AI that will wipe out humanity. According to Álvarez, the advantages that a tool such as AI will bring to the world as a whole are far greater than the potential misuse of it..
At the end of the day, the speakers received the medal commemorating the centenary of the Consular Corps.
To close this first block, José Miguel Zaldo was in charge of putting on the table one of the most recurrent concerns when talking about Artificial Intelligence.
According to Zaldo, the fear in much of society that AI will end up destroying jobs or impacting people’s lives in a significantly negative way is just an unfounded one. He outlined how AI is an opportunity, both to improve and streamline jobs (even those that need to be reinvented, as other technologies throughout history have forced us to do), and to ensure an improvement in the living conditions of many people in parts of the world where it would otherwise be impossible.
The closing of the event was joined by Laura Marrón, Director of BAIC, the Basque Artificial Intelligence Center. Marrón took her turn to claim the importance of AI for the Basque Country. She also explained how BAIC encourages companies to adopt it in a responsible way and explained some of the organization’s objectives for the coming years..
At the end of the day there was an interesting round of questions in which attendees were able to clear many of the doubts that AI is generating in society. Finally, a more relaxed space accompanied by an aperitif served to share ideas, questions and talk with the protagonists of a relevant day.
