There are just a few days left for Chema Alonso to face an audience full of analysts, journalists and executives from the sector and from Telefónica, waiting for one of the most anticipated announcements from Telefónica in recent years, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It has not been easy to find a gap in his schedule for an interview in which Chema has reflected on what AI can and cannot do.
Although there are many predictions about when artificial intelligence (AI) will not only match human intelligence but that of all humans , Chema estimates that 2050 could be the year that AI would be similar to that of people . It will be necessary to see if we suffer technological disruptions along the way. If quantum computers are developed, if we find new sources of energy that allow us to massively increase the computing capacity that we have today.
If all this happens, 2050 is a horizon close enough for us to start thinking about things like the morality of artificial intelligence , and far enough so that we can still influence how we want to build that human-like AI.
Proud of his past, and of his present, as a hacker , Chema is absolutely sure that artificial intelligence can be created that respects one hundred percent of people’s privacy , and is also at their service. But he also believes that we could encounter AI that is misusing people’s data, and we must therefore take steps to prevent it.
In any case , the Chief Data Officer of Telefónica considers that artificial intelligence, like other disruptive technologies, will transform the economic status of a Company. And that is why Chema says that we have to be able to adapt and transform people’s employment at a sufficient speed that at which we make a technological disruption. We must be consistent with the application of technology to Society. Technology has to help make a society better, and not destroy it . “And obviously a new technology kills jobs, but opens the opportunity to new ones .”
And when asked if AI will be the decisive technology to help immortality be achieved, Chema says that “we do not know.” “AI is just one more support for scientists who are investing their time and effort in this discipline, that of immortality. Or that of the death of death, as the eccentric and branded by some as a technological preacher says, José Luis Cordeiro.
