Nicolay Buitrago and Camilo Rivera, two Software Engineering students, are convinced of the importance of Colombia joining the debate on Artificial Intelligence. They know that these technological advances occur mostly in North America, Europe and Asia and that the South American country has other priorities, such as the fight against poverty and inequality. But they insist that you cannot look the other way. “We cannot isolate ourselves from a world that is becoming more technological, that is changing rapidly,” they commented to this newspaper. That is why they attended this Thursday PRISA Media’s Fourth Artificial Intelligence Summit (publishing company of EL PAÍS), at the Movistar Arena in Bogotá.
The two students explain that computers, autonomously, can now interpret data and generate information in a language accessible to humans. They collect, synthesize, and adapt, as ChatGPT does with the instant summaries it produces in response to user questions. For Camilo and Nicolay, the opportunities are enormous: more sophisticated jobs and a better quality of life. However, they also point out the difficulties that Colombia has so that everyone can have equitable access to the benefits. And they say that the challenge is to maintain the roots, while the country gradually joins the transformations that are advancing rapidly in other parts of the world. Both recognize the tension that exists when talking about AI, debates immersed between optimism and uncertainty.
There are more than 500 people in the Movistar Arena. Most are assistants like Camilo and Nicolay, who follow the discussions from the public. The rest are representatives of the State, companies and civil society who take the stage and give lectures, share testimonies and participate in panels. The latter include the Minister of Information Technology and Communications, Mauricio Lizcano; ANDI’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship manager, Alejandro Olaya; the vice rector of the Areandina University, Marta Castellanos; the director of Legal Affairs of Microsoft for the Andean region, Andrés Rengifo; and the founder of the Mudan Programmer initiative, Estefanía Montes, who told how you can learn to program through dance.
PRISA Media’s content director in Colombia, Alejandro Santos, posed one of the triggering questions: “How do we adopt these technologies without generating more unemployment, which is a fundamental priority in Colombia?”. Minister Lizcano responded that he believes that there will be a “transition” towards new jobs, typical of a new era. “Technology changes the job, but it doesn’t displace it,” he said. He agreed with the executive director of Robótika, Camilo Barrera, who gave the bank employees with whom clients used to talk in physical branches as an example. Although many of those jobs have been lost, there are now young programmers keeping the apps and online services, like remote payments, going.
Barrera noted that Colombia has around 500 robots in its workforce. It is a tiny figure compared to countries like Singapore, which has one of these devices for every 10 workers. “Latin America, with the exception of Mexico and Brazil, is not automated,” he stressed, referring to growth opportunities in the sector. Lizcano, for his part, stressed that the country must be aware of how other more advanced States regulate in the sector and that regulations must be consolidated that address ethical dilemmas “without killing technological development.”
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The most emphatic in pointing out the challenges for employment was the vice president of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), Julio Cortés, who believes that the opportunities will not reach all Colombians equally. “This does not give the same to the children of Ciudad Bolívar as to those of Chocó,” he said. For him, it is difficult to give this debate when there is an educational system that does not reach many sectors of the population and that is slow to adapt to changes. “Many Colombians don’t even finish primary school,” he said. Even so, he affirmed that the CUT is open to transformations and that it will participate in the discussion: “We are not like the unionists of the 18th century, where they blamed the machine and destroyed it.”
Iván Rojas, diversity and inclusion manager at Banco de Bogotá, appreciated Cortés’ point and pointed out that in Colombia several of the conditions that favor the development of AI opportunities are still lacking. “Without English we cannot quickly adopt new technologies because unfortunately not all of them are translated into Spanish,” he commented. However, he emphasized the importance of each one thinking about how to adapt to new jobs. “Could I as a lawyer learn some programming?” he wondered.
Other challenges present during the event included racial and gender bias, since the algorithms were mostly developed by white men. Also copyright, as evidenced by the reproduction before lunch of a cloned voice of the announcer Armando Plata Camacho, made a few months ago without his consent and without him receiving financial compensation. Camacho, president of the Colombian Association of Broadcasters, acknowledged that trades like his should look for alternatives that allow them to “quote with AI.”
“Who is responsible? [legal] of the damage that these technologies can cause?”, questioned Rengifo, the representative of Microsoft. It is one of the dilemmas still unresolved, although little by little regulations appear in different parts of the world. It was mentioned in the discussions the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligenceadopted in 2021 by 193 Member States of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
This edition of the Artificial Intelligence Summit is the first this year, which will have three other meetings. It is part of PRISA Media’s vocation to open spaces for reflection and analysis among the country’s leaders, with frank and direct dialogues. It joins other events that take place throughout the year: from forums in Bogotá on the challenges of food security or democracy to the Route Regionsa territorial promotion initiative that has already visited several departments of Colombia.
The full broadcast of the event is available in this link.
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