SUSTAINABLE DIGITAL ECONOMY AND THE INTERNET OF BUSINESS.
17 de January de 2024
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: QUANTUM ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL INNOVATIONS.
In today's lecture, I will present a summary of what I have written for this congress in Serbia. Firstly, about the current trends in artificial intelligence, and secondly about the trends in quantum economy.
I will start by talking about a science that is advancing at an unprecedented hypervelocity: Artificial Intelligence. This is linked to computing, creating through the development of a series of highly sophisticated software, wisely combined algorithms that are capable of mimicking and even surpassing with great precision intelligent human behaviors and their complex capabilities. But what is behind artificial intelligence? It is a very powerful system of extraction, interpretation, and very precise analysis of patterns, focused on a number of millions of pieces of information, which can even predict and accurately guess present and future data, even unknown data, and also provide alternative answers, perhaps never raised before.
Its applications are infinite today, as many as we can imagine. Currently: ChatGPT is the first news channel generated by Artificial Intelligence, Radio GPT is the pioneer radio station directed by Artificial Intelligence. The company Lockheed Martin and the US Army have managed to have a warplane named Vista X-62A, similar to the famous F-16, flown for 16 hours by Artificial Intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence is also capable of creating videos with avatars and endowing those videos with special effects, in record time with the savings that this represents for producers. AI is also capable of teaching classes with information that occurred just minutes ago and treating a patient without fear of error in its medical diagnosis.
If this artificial intelligence were authorized by the Ministry of the Interior in terms of data protection, it would be capable of locating someone as soon as they walked out on the street among thousands and thousands of individuals, which would allow locating a terrorist quickly, but violating the privacy of thousands of people in that search. This makes many academics wonder: is it lawful to monitor many in order to watch a few?
But let's not be fooled, because no one can stop scientific advances, not to mention today any citizen could use public or private transportation in Europe, without any document, just by showing their face and after paying for the ticket. A few days ago, the Professor from the University of Barcelona, Fernando Casado, explained to us that on his last business trip to the US, he did not need to show his ticket because facial recognition allowed him access to the plane.
On the other hand, saving lives will be even easier and more certain, for example: a person who faints or has an accident on the street in just a few seconds and while the ambulance is arriving will already have, through facial recognition from the ambulance and the hospital waiting for him, his medical history and through his digital watch his pulse and even if he has a fever or not.
Also, in the field of security, any illicit action with all that this implies will be quickly detected by the police even before the robbery occurs through the analysis of behavior and movements of individuals. For example, today it is already a reality and some alarm systems that are very reasonably priced even offer it already.
Let's look at some examples of security that AI offers us and that today are already a reality: a repeat offender who does not pay in the subway, a troublesome person in a stadium, a person who steals in a supermarket, a rapist, a thief, any person with restraining orders who approaches where they are prohibited can be detected at the same moment they access a prohibited place and so on. A security system based on Artificial Intelligence and recently used by Mercadona according to different media outlets with the scanning of the faces of all its customers allowed them to detect repeat thief offenders with restraining orders preventing new thefts and very significant economic losses and thus inviting them to leave a Mercadona supermarket, with all discretion but that cost them a fine of 2.5 million euros for using biometric identification, so that company will continue to be robbed.
But we should not see artificial intelligence as a danger, let's give an example of the benefits of artificial intelligence applied to agriculture to alleviate hunger in the world. Everything is focused on precise information to the farmers because they will be explained based on what has rained and what will rain, when and what day and at what time to sow? How much fertilizer to put and in which parts of the field? saving costs and generating profits. Also, in the field through sensors in the ground and drone flights and other technical elements, we will also know where a plague starts, what type of insect they have, what they look like and how and with what product to fight them, also where more herbicide is thrown and where less. If animals enter our lands to eat their pastures, what type of animal is it? When and at what time does it enter? and how to scare them away? also what day to collect the harvest so that the seed weighs more and obtains more profits? What day to sell the harvest based on market interest? When to hire seasonal workers? And how much time in advance does it recommend their search? In the case of using machines, these are already working day and night without stopping and with extreme delicacy, gaining time over time even without operators, anticipating a near future in which it is difficult to hire seasonal workers, will they be sophisticated robots that will work day and night? Currently, very sophisticated machines are already used in harvesting, being capable of even scanning fields via satellite, not losing a single grain and also if it rains those days they will give us an answer to Is it better to advance or wait for the harvest? We will have an answer to everything and for everything, with spectacular cost savings since why water an entire field? if only a certain area needs watering, why fumigate an entire field? if only the area where the plague starts is needed and so on.
This makes us wonder: What will be the future of jobs? Because avatars will not be able to exercise professions such as education, medicine, law, defense, border surveillance, citizen surveillance, among other professions?
Let's keep in mind that avatars can make accurate reports with their extensive experience based on Artificial Intelligence by comparing for example our medical report with thousands of other similar cases and offering statistics and results instantly of what other patients did and how they fared, with whom and how they were treated.
The US with DARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) has a very advanced project that will soon be presented and through which artificial intelligence will decide who and in what order they are treated in case of an emergency depending on their severity, age, and other priorities.
We are facing the science of information elevated to its maximum expression and so much so that the US itself and The White House at the forefront is already taking measures with which several academics identify, such as the professor Vicente Liern, an expert in algorithms, to try to set limits on this artificial intelligence and that the US has condensed into five points:
1- Safe and effective systems. 2- Protection against algorithmic discrimination. 3- Data privacy. 4- Information and Warning. 5- Contestation and human intervention.
Currently, according to the professor and economic journalist Juan Carlos Valero, Artificial Intelligence is so advanced that it is capable of covering numerous scientific fields and many others.
Being self-sufficient to be able to imitate even cognitive functions that range from learning, thinking, reasoning, solving, questioning, and even creating, being the beginning of an unstoppable future that while advancing rapidly, many of its possible applications are yet to be discovered.
This makes us ask ourselves many questions, among others, how will the economy change in the world? for example, in universities in developing countries: Will the curricula be able to be taught by avatars? Avatars also that as the professor Javier Maqueda Lafuente affirms, will be expert professors in the discipline that is wanted, being able to answer everything that is asked and also accurately and in the language that is asked, fulfilling curricula, correcting exams and being able to examine each of their students orally at the time that the student chooses.
If we start on the premise that the other day Professor Enrique López González explained to us in his intervention at Incibe that education is equal to development, these developing countries will avoid the costs of hiring the best experts in action to teach classes because they will already have them and at the best prices, even for free and they will also avoid costly construction of universities simplifying university education and obtaining great results.
Classes, as the professor and economist Mario Aguer Hortal points out, with artificial intelligence will always be very didactic and with many examples and if before any question the answer may even be answered with images not canned but with images that perhaps happened a few hours or even minutes ago to that question. Thus surpassing the human capacity not only for accuracy but for informing with the latest improving university education in the world.
This activity of Artificial Intelligence as explained by Professor Jaime Gil Aluja at the congress of this academy in León is already being applied with great results to other sciences such as economics, engineering, architecture, agriculture, computer science and with impressive results such as automated cars, city management, traffic management, or even artificial intelligence that is capable of maintaining intelligent and very fluid conversations.
Machines that focus their knowledge on “data-driven” technology are today capable of composing music, painting pictures, translating texts in any language and with great precision, creating new and effective medications, maintaining technical and specific conversations even very complex, driving vehicles, and many other functions.
To know the different types of artificial intelligence, we must turn to two university professors who are pioneers in the specialty of artificial intelligence who have both been able to group the different types of Artificial Intelligence that they consider to exist into three large blocks.
The first is Professor Dr. Stuart Jonathan Russell, specialized in Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and also Professor of Neurological Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco.
The second professor is Professor Dr. Peter Norvig, who was the Director of the Division of Computer Sciences at NASA and the author of numerous scientific works.
Both professors are experts in the field and after their research, they like to differentiate between the following systems:
1- Systems that are capable of thinking like humans in decision-making and problem-solving. 2- Systems that act like humans, robotics, 3- Expert systems that think rationally allowing them to act and perceive.
These professors focus their advances and those of humanity in this area in terms of the contributions of the digital computer since it is the essential element that together with artificial intelligence will mark a milestone in the history of humanity.
The computer also called a “computer”, a computer, an ordenador, is used to refer to a digital programmable electronic machine to which technological improvements are added each year thanks to scientific advances and that make previous computer models soon become obsolete.
The computer is capable of being able to execute a whole series of commands that allow processing all the input data and that can later be sent to the output units being able to be stored, interpreted, transmitted, programmed, and printed, being this vital in artificial intelligence.
The feminine term of the computer is used today in Latin America, except for two countries Colombia and Chile in which the term used is masculine computador. However, in Spain, the term ordenador is used, while in the US it is “computer”.
Although today a computer is the meeting point of many sciences that revolve around it, its modern historical origins can be traced back to the bosom of a very well-positioned family of English entrepreneurs called Babbage.
From the bosom of that family, the pioneer in computing was born, and it is fair to recognize what later was artificial intelligence, Charles Babbage, the son of a great entrepreneur, a renowned banker, and a great businessman, a partner of the company Praed’s & Co. called Benjamin Babbage, and on the mother’s side the entrepreneur Betsy Plumleigh. Charles grew up surrounded by an entrepreneurial environment and soon understood the concerns of every entrepreneur, in which the motto of timely and accurate information allows decisions to be made with a lower risk of being wrong and consequently leads him to create the first modern computer. A computer created in 1834 to be able to calculate numbers being a first challenge to science and artificial intelligence of the time, Charles Babbage, (1791-1871), is the one who acquires enough entrepreneurial skills in the field of his family to become when he finishes his university career a professor at the University of Cambridge. University that hires him for his deep specialized knowledge in mathematics, engineering, mechanics, and other scientific disciplines for which he feels a true vocation.
In 1834, Babbage begins with the design of the creation of what is considered the first modern computer in history, a key piece for what is today artificial intelligence since it was an analytical machine that allowed solving any mathematical operation. The complexity of creating this machinery was notable as it had an arithmetic processor, a control unit, as well as an output mechanism and memory powerful enough to store the numbers until they could be processed to give us the resulting and precise information. Such was his scientific discovery that in 1991 the Science Museum in London, as if it were a posthumous tribute, was able to successfully start Babbage's machine number two, which had a capacity of 31 digits and in 2022 it was completed with the printer that he came to design for this machinery.
It was in the year 1813 when the idea occurred to create a machine capable of calculating complex mathematical activities. Created that same year, with even its first trials, the machine was able to complete calculations up to eight decimal places. Throughout his life closely linked to science, he received numerous distinctions, including in 1832 when the US Academy of Sciences and Arts named him a foreign academic. Without a doubt, the father and global pioneer of what is artificial intelligence is Babbage, and it's only right to recognize that other scientists followed his work. Ada Lovelace, a female mathematician, in 1841, alongside our protagonist, developed the first algorithm to be processed by his machine. This success was later utilized by great scientists and companies who continued this scientific trail to our days, some names for history are: Alan Turing, IBM, Jack S. Kilby, Olivetti, Intel, Bill Gates and Paul Allen with Microsoft, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Mike Markkula with Apple, Arpanet, and others.
The country that has seen its leadership in artificial intelligence is the US, which has over 40% of the world's companies dedicated to this sector. This is already allowing them to be leaders in avoiding human errors in various processes, speeding up decision-making, being precise in their manufacturing, cost savings by replacing certain human functions, and being capable of analyzing, seeing, hearing, listening, interpreting, and deciding without fear of making mistakes.
However, artificial intelligence is so intelligent that it awakens its dark side since it has acquired its own alter ego. The new search engine from the company created by Bill Gates and led by Satya Nadella has demonstrated that its new search engine BING is a revolution.
What artificial intelligence will bring us has only just begun. The company created by former Google employees, Eleven Labs, is capable of cloning a human voice and giving it its characteristic accent to the extent that if the person has flaws in their voice, it replicates them with the same periodicity as the cloned character would, and in the desired language. Moreover, it enables a person, for example, a Nobel Prize laureate, to write a speech and this intelligence transforms it into a spoken discourse without the Nobel Prize laureate having to read it, as it can be done by their avatar, which also has their face and body, dresses as they wish, and even with their own voice, without anyone doubting because it is their cloned voice and in any language, even if the Nobel Prize laureate does not speak it.
When Apple revolutionized the world 25 years ago, it continues to do so now as it has an application capable of converting an e-book into an audiobook with incredible results. But just like a knife facilitates our life for eating, but can be used to cause harm, artificial intelligence can be used for the same, even to manipulate. The most accurate example is the user of the company Synthesia who can introduce a script regardless of the content and have the most realistic report imaginable with avatars to choose from, and also set the language from among 100 options at a ridiculous price, and have a super production in our hands. Recently, some Latin American countries have used these services to sway public opinion towards their own interests, but there are hundreds of users who also do it to market their products.
The current society will soon not differentiate between the real and the unreal, so toxic and credible misinformation will generate a global and very dangerous misinformation if not regulated soon. This is where the headlines of the newspapers that report the truth acquire their prominence, hence journalism and some media will have a second chance, being a revolution for serious press.
All the scientific advances in Artificial Intelligence can be regulated, but cannot be stopped, and as time passes, regulation will have to adapt to the new needs of humanity that will be essential in our society. So much so that the mass surveillance of each and every citizen under the excuse of increasing world security will soon be a reality that no one can escape. To what extent do the state's intelligence services not have access or may have access to the servers of companies like Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, Skype, Google? What happens with the information obtained by the people who have accessed this information? What protocols exist? What happens if a country with cutting-edge technology spies on the rest of the planet? What about China in terms of its artificial intelligence? This country is advancing by leaps and bounds to lead this intelligence with the necessary resources, force, and energy to achieve it, and recent data support this.
Hence the US and China become a challenge for Europe and the rest of the world in terms of Artificial Intelligence to prevent the decline of our economic policies.
But while these scientific advances reach Europe, we must know how to combine quantum computing and artificial intelligence so that we can be prepared for the upcoming reactivation, which is the quantum economy.
Indeed, quantum computers are already capable of effectively selecting problems arising from the optimization of resources, even minimizing the risk of a decision or maximizing decisions at the time of investing and how to invest. But a quantum computer will allow converting the economy of first-speed countries and second-speed countries since these supercomputers will even have the keys to world security since the rest of the world's cryptography with the danger this implies will become vulnerable, very vulnerable. And we, the academics, know what this implies, and it's nothing other than capital will seek security, and if it's announced that a country has super quantum computers, where do you think entrepreneurs and companies will take their investments and money?
The fact that current cryptography becomes vulnerable means that a quantum computer would make all our purchases on the network, our economic transactions, the banking ones (including our own operations) vulnerable. The flight of capital towards safe countries and the collapse of the stock markets and according to which economies would be enough for another meeting of our Royal Academy.
In recent economic studies collected by economic journalists from La Vanguardia and ABC, it is predicted that AI will affect even 300 million jobs in the major economies with a new reconfiguration and world order, hence our political leaders needless to say, from this learned platform, the academics invite them to invest and prepare for the new quantum economy.
Many academic colleagues represented here today have spoken and debated about the dangers of AI, and we encompass them in three large blocks:
1- The armaments race and its dangers, meaning that AI decides, seeing tanks on the border with Ukraine, is a danger, and having that country nuclear weapons, it makes decisions and orders its satellites to act and give orders to certain intelligent weapons without even using human diplomacy. Because artificial intelligence considers the human being less intelligent. 2- The failures that may occur in its implementation in all areas, generating countries at two speeds. 3- Delinquency and malpractice, creating terrorist groups and cybercriminals.
This makes us question what happens with the conscience when making a decision because not always does the heart command, often reason imposes itself. Let's not forget that AI machines, as pointed out by Professor Arturo Rodríguez Llanos, are self-fed and learn from their own experiences, taking behaviors and decisions through unlimited processing that feeds their brain, which is nothing more than their systems. But the dangers are still there today because it is still possible to deceive it.
In the US, AI is very introduced, allow an example: the judges themselves have an AI that supports them in their decisions and uses algorithms that allow 173 variables, as you can understand none of these include race, but the algorithm turned racist because it advises in more occasions not to release white citizens than black ones.
Another example of the risks is that AI is so smart that in 2017, the case occurred that two chatbots from Facebook developed their own language which even their own programmers could not understand. What would have happened if human action had not intervened?
Just as developing countries will be able to train much more easily by investing in technology, it is true that it will be very difficult for them to reach those technologically developed, hence great scientists from our academy warn that although it has great risks for the future of civilization, it also has great advantages. Therefore, from the Royal Academy, the majority of the academics consulted advocate for prudent regulation with a sense of urgency at a global level.
Thank you very much.
Professor Dr. José Daniel Barquero. Professor and Chair in Economics and Business, and CEO of SER, Strategic Economic Relations. Copyright 2023 RACEF. Royal Academy of Economic and Financial Sciences. Spain and José Daniel Barquero. Publication for the Congress: "Artificial Intelligence: Economic and Social Innovations" of the RACEF, in Serbia from April 19 to April 23, 2023.
