It was almost a year ago when I began this adventure of learning, developing and writing about artificial intelligence (AI), its techniques, the protagonists that make it possible, companies, scientists, solutions, … And today I am proud to speak of someone who has had an excellent year of recognition that has finished this month of December with her appointment, and is the fourth woman to achieve it, as an Academician of the Royal Spanish Academy of Engineering. It is about my ex-partner at Telefónica, and today at Vodafone, Nuria Oliver. It was my first interview on this blog, back in February of this year. I will not remember his words in that talk, more than you knew. Yes, I am going to do it from some passages of her speech at the entrance to the Royal Academy, which she has come to solely and exclusively for her merits, knowledge and work that endorse her as one of the greatest national authorities, and I would add that also to international level, in the field of artificial intelligence.
‘Artificial intelligence: Fiction, reality and dreams’ was the title of his speech at the entrance to the Royal Academy of Engineering, and in it he expressed his gratitude, among others, to the Obra Social la Caixa Foundation and his thesis professor Sandy Pentland from MIT, which enabled him to pursue his Ph.D. at the MIT Media Lab and realize his ‘dream’. His first dream, since then others would come, also successful. Such as being the first scientific director at Telefónica I + D , where she came from the hand of Carlos Domingo, in his day CEO of the subsidiary of the Spanish telecom in charge of Research and Development, and where I had the pleasure of coinciding and learn with and from her.
Another dream, as she herself points out, was the opportunity to work from her homeland, Alicante, and develop her work for Vodafone as Scientific Director in the Data area. of human behavior using artificial intelligence techniques. I have worked with rooms, clothes, cars and smart phones. I have invented systems capable of recognizing human behavior or characteristics such as facial expressions, activities, human interactions, driving maneuvers, sleep apnea, credit risk, crime hot spots in cities or even boredom … I have built interactive systems and smart on computers and mobiles, for example. Thanks to having developed my scientific career in a business context, I have been able to feel, first-hand, the deep happiness that floods you when you manage to turn what was nothing more than an idea – sometimes even a bit crazy – into a reality. that can help millions of people ”, said Nuria in her entrance speech at the academic institution.
After making a meticulous and historical review of the origins of AI to this day, Nuria Oliver defends how the availability of huge amounts of data, as a result of human activity through the use of digital services, as well as the digitalization processes of the physical world, accompanied by the availability of very powerful processors at low cost and the development of deep and complex neural network architectures and deep learning models trained with such data have led to artificial intelligence living today a “ perpetual spring ” , In the words of his professor and friend from Stanford University Andrew Ng, with whom he also met at MIT.
Nuria also recalled that she is part of the Committee of 9 experts appointed by the previous Secretary of State for Digital Advancement, for the preparation of a white paper on Big Data and AI with strategic recommendations for the Government of Spain. A book that should be published before the summer of 2019, but the current government does not yet know what its path will be, especially when the European Union itself, in addition to China and the United States, are already pulling at high speed. so that artificial intelligence is one of the triggers of the 4th Industrial Revolution. And although Nuria does not say it with these words, Spain has the serious risk of being placed in the tail wagon of the development of this technology, which will have a negative impact on society, employment and the national economy.
“As we well know,” says Nuria Oliver, “human beings tend to be resistant to change, especially as we age. Therefore, we should consider the possibility of the existence of a social group incapable of adapting to this constant need for learning and therefore lacking the necessary tools to contribute to the society of tomorrow. In the words of the historian Yuval Noah Harari, a ‘useless class’ ”. And this is one of the reasons why Nuria insists in all the forums in which she participates, and even more so in her appointment as an academic, that education is paramount. “We have to invest in both formal and informal education. If we don’t, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for us as a society to be able to make decisions about technologies that we do not understand and that consequently we frequently fear. I fully agree with the words of Marie Curie: nothing in life should be feared, but understood. Now is the time to understand more in order to fear less ”.
And that is why our new academic demands that in the stages of compulsory education (primary and secondary) the subject of Computational Thinking is incorporated, which covers five basic areas of knowledge in a technological context: algorithms, data, networking, programming and hardware . “Something that is already done in many developed countries, but not in Spain.”
However, and despite the great challenges that await us with the development of artificial intelligence, the ethical principles for human-centered AI is perhaps one of Nuria’s biggest concerns in her current job. “ Decision-making based on data-trained algorithms is not without limitations. Curiously, Plato’s words from 2400 years ago are surprisingly relevant today: a good decision is based on knowledge, not on numbers (data) ”.
Nuria says that “when these decisions affect thousands or millions of people, important ethical dilemmas arise. Will automatic decisions escape our control? What levels of security do these systems have to protect themselves from cyberattacks or their malicious use? How can we guarantee that these decisions and / or actions do not have negative consequences for people? Who is responsible for these decisions? What will happen when an algorithm knows each of us better than ourselves and can take advantage of that knowledge to subliminally manipulate our behavior? These are questions that Nuria Oliver throws to the fore and that we will be able to answer if we follow the values that she herself indicates: Autonomy, Dignity, Justice, Solidarity, Sustainability, Truthfulness, Diversity, Transparency, Responsibility, Reliability, Security, Reproducibility, Prudence and Privacy.
Will our future be better thanks to artificial intelligence? “I don’t know it,” says Nuria. But here he also recognizes his other “three dreams for the future with AI”. The first, “A future where technology and artificial intelligence are an integral part of our lives, not only to live longer, but above all to live better.” The second, “that Spain invests much more in artificial intelligence than it does currently”. And the third, “that there are more and more women engineers, researchers, inventors, innovators in technology and academics of this Royal Academy, who are exceptional not because of their status as women, but because of the brilliance of their ideas and the impact of their job”. Congratulations Nuria. And for those who did not have the opportunity to listen to his keynote presentation, here is the link: Nuria Oliver’s speech
