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ISE2022 in Barcelona – Day 3 Inclusion & Transparency: Inclusion and language barriers in parliamentary debates.

May 12, 2022
News about:

Moderator: 

  • David Casals, Expansión Journalist 

Panel: 

  • Daniel Santanach, Secretariat of Digital Policies coordinator of the AI Strategy of Catalonia
  • Sergi Frontons, Fraternidad Muprespa Development Department Director
  • Gabriel Anzaldi, Eurecat Director of Scientific and Technological Development
  • Enrico Giannotti, CEDAT85 Managing Director

 

Gabriel Anzaldi is the first participant to speak about the language barriers that exist in public institutions such as the plenary sessions of the European Union, the United Nations and any international entity with different official languages. He points out that when he came across applications such as the one presented at the CEDAT85 stand (CABOLO®), he realised that technology is at the service of society and that technological development clearly contributes to overcoming barriers, in this case language barriers. Added to this is the degree of accuracy achieved in translations.

On the other hand, with regard to the advantages that technology and AI can bring in the area of citizen participation, for him, Artificial Intelligence is present in all areas of society, Gabriel indicates that the benefits can be observed in all sectors. In addition, we need to start talking about predictive management, anticipating scenarios in order to improve. These days it is being applied in parliaments in France and Japan, to analyse labour content, so that the impact of laws is analysed before they are passed. 

The next topic to be discussed is the digital transformation project in Catalonia, to which Daniel Santanach comments that the Catalan government is working on different strategies: for IOT, blockchain and mainly AI but bearing in mind that at this point there are issues related to ethical issues that are important – alluding to Cambridge Analytica. He also added that the aim is for Catalan to be incorporated into the solutions that large multinationals currently have, in the form of a voice assistant.

With regard to how this type of device can consolidate one of the challenges that now exists in societies around the world, which is interculturality, Enrico Giannotti replies that it can help in exactly this direction. For example, in the European Parliament, the barriers of communication between the citizens of the European Union are being reduced as much as possible, where the different languages are completely different from each other, but at the same time, the aim is to preserve the different identities and dialects because they are part of the heritage of a country.

Lastly, the moderator raised the question of the application of intelligent AI solutions in the field of healthcare, and specifically in clinical diagnostics. In the words of Sergi Frontons, the speed and quality of decisions is fundamental, which is why he believes that AI has been used, sometimes unconsciously, for years. When it comes to opening a process, there is the all-important question of which pathology is involved. Traditionally, this has been explained with natural language; now, with the coding system, the catalogue of pathologies is very exhaustive and with fewer errors. 

Finally, the question arises as to whether the different innovations resulting from research are scaling up to the industrial level, i.e., from research to their application at the industrial or commercial level.

According to Gabriel Anzaldi, we are at a point where there are a series of instruments and a series of technologies that have reached a sufficient level of maturity to be able to boost and promote them, so that they can be transformed into products and used by society. There is a great deal of basic knowledge that needs to be promoted.

For Daniel Santanach, what the Public Administration does in this respect is to be facilitators, i.e., to make it easier for companies and research centres to have, on the one hand, funds to invest in the AI project, but not only this, but also to identify who has a problem, identify who has a possible solution and sit them at the same table.