Francisco J. Martín has a gift, I think. He knows what he’s talking about. He is an expert in his field, machine learning (ML) or machine learning. And it is very humble. He does not brag, nor does he want to appear in the media and on forums speaking and making bombastic headlines, as others do, about the technology that is already changing companies and society, artificial intelligence (AI). As he points out, he has been interested in and working for this universe for more than 23 years, and did his post-doctorate at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the CSIC with Ramón López de Mántaras, director of the CSIC Institute.
Since then, and until today, he has created several companies specialized in one of the branches or techniques of AI, machine learning, with a challenge and a passion, as he says: “to make machines show the slightest sign of intelligence ” . The most engineering version of Francisco J. Martín is the one that makes it so that where others see problems, he recognizes solutions that with a little intelligence of the machines so that they can make life much easier and more entertaining for humans.
At Big ML ” what we try to do is make technology democratize, make it much more accessible to a lot more people” , and not just remain in the hands of a few very large companies. And in the seven years that we have been with Big ML “ we have gone from an extreme in which many said that they did not understand anything of what you were talking about, to another in which people ask us to start with the platform from one day to the next. . We have done something that few companies have done to date, and that is to make the platform accessible immediately. In a matter of seconds, companies connect to Big ML and have access to all the solutions it provides.
Francisco J. Martín is very critical of the consulting firms that release figures and forecasts of what the AI or ML market means, or whether companies will use it or not. “I would like to have an algorithm that would tell me how reliable all those forecasts are .” In the first three months of the year, Big ML has had more than 5,000 companies from around the world interested in its platform. ” Each and every one of the companies in the world will need ML in the short term , otherwise they will not be competitive .”
Machine learning can be found today in a multitude of applications, in a transparent way, such as correctors when the user is writing a message on WhatsApp, or when Google is able to tell him if there will be more or less traffic on a certain route. All this type of inferences, below it has ML algorithms that have found a series of patterns that are what allow making this series of inferences.
Regarding the ethics of algorithms, Francisco J. Martín considers that “there is an excess of paranoia” . Algorithms are not going to do anything that people haven’t told you to do. If what is intended is that there is no type of fraud, bias or prejudice when making a decision, the applications programmed by people should also be regulated in the same sense since humans are the ones who have invented the fraud. ” The machines are not going to increase any type of fraud .”
Also regarding artificial intelligence gurus, who today proliferate and are capable of making predictions about immortality or about the moment when AI will be superior to human intelligence, Francisco is very skeptical, if not critical. ” Based on current facts, on the basic knowledge of what it costs to make a minimally intelligent computer system today, these few years that are expected for machines supposedly to surpass humans in intelligence, I think they can be more a few hundred years than a few decades ”.
With the sharing of medical data, diagnoses of similar diseases, or different treatments and diagnoses for the same disease, if we are able to build a large database of information, we would greatly improve world health, diagnoses, treatments. ” And this is what makes me desperate many times about the great protectors of privacy, which are the ones that somehow prevent some areas of science from improving due to the use of these technologies such as AI algorithms .” Otherwise there are things that doctors will never in life be able to identify. If with these helps we heal before, and we can avoid various types of diseases, yes we can extend life a few more years . But from there to immortality there is still an infinity. ” When I hear about these things, I laugh.”
As much as computers have gained in computing speed, and the price has fallen dramatically, the algorithms and software engineering that make it possible to take advantage of these machines have not evolved to the same level. The algorithms that are being put into practice today have 20 or 30 years old. And as much as we push ourselves right now, we can’t move faster. “ The only pressure that moves some to say certain things is monetary . Teachers who used to charge 100,000 now earn a million for saying certain things. And many people who talk about this type of thing have not programmed in their lives, they have never written code or they have done it for a long time and it is believed that today that is automated ”.
Francisco is also sure that between this year and the beginning of the next one we will see the disappearance of the hype in AI and ML. We have lived through a period of very great misinformation. “ When you are selling Cognitive Intelligence to consumers, you have to be very careful. It is like selling cars that fly. Many of these technologies are sold with excessive marketing and in some large companies this is bought not based on testing it to see if it works or not, but rather the decision is made to buy on a golf course. And so this is what causes the hype cycles to extend more or less ”.
And speaking of Spain, technologies and artificial intelligence, Francisco J. Martín asserts that in our country there are scientists who have studied these issues for years, and that perhaps they have not known how to force themselves to create an educational system that takes advantage of it. And that is why it has been diluted in one of the many subjects that can be studied. “ I listen to people who say that they are going to study a Master in Big Data, and I am one of those who say that Big Data is one of the greatest nonsense that has ever been invented. Because Big Data is the Data of tomorrow. There is no point in calling it Big just because it is one size. I don’t know what people mean when they talk about Big Data ” . Francisco is very critical, and believes that the Spanish educational system needs a very large strategic reform where areas of interest for the country are chosen to create value in those areas. And if I had to make a bet for Spain, I would do it at the intersection of medicine with new technologies. “ In Spain there are good doctors and very good startups in this field of AI. If these startups were in China or the US, they would surely receive much more interest from investors ” .
