The predictive capacity offered by Artificial Intelligence establishes a competitive advantage for companies, as has been shown in the AI ​​& Big Data Congress, which has highlighted the importance of the early adoption of this technology in order to generate more economic activity and jobs, as well as the support it provides in terms of adaptation from the point of view of the intelligence of organizations, in a context such as the current one marked by Covid-19.

The director of the AI ​​& Big Data Congress, Marc Torrent, who directs the Centre of Innovation for Data tech and Artificial Intelligence (CIDAI) and the Big Data & Data Science Unit of Eurecat, has listed the areas of activity where a significant transfer of Artificial Intelligence is expected, among which he has cited the agricultural sector, energy and sustainability, language and speech, mobility, health and well-being, education, cultural and experience-based industries and Industry 4.0.

“Those countries that are most determined to bet on Artificial Intelligence will be the ones that will capture more economic growth and, consequently, more business and job creation, and also a higher quality adoption, focused on its principles and not with imported technology,” said the Director General of Innovation and Digital Economy of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Daniel Marco, at the welcome session of the congress.

Artificial Intelligence “is perhaps one of the digital technologies that will have the greatest impact on companies, society and territories,” highlighted Marco, who has estimated that there are 180 companies in this field in Catalonia, which, he stressed, are invoicing 1,350 million euros.

“Artificial Intelligence will be one of the elements of business differentiation,” agreed the president of Eurecat, Xavier Torra, who pointed out that the predictive capacity provided by this technology “gives full value to the collection and processing of data.”

According to Torra, “Artificial Intelligence offers opportunities for differentiation that are affordable for medium-sized companies, to compete in markets that are increasingly tough.”

For the Commissioner for Digital Innovation, Electronic Administration and Good Governance of the Barcelona City Council, Michael Donaldson, “to the predictive capacity that the understanding of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence provides, we will have to add the capacity to adapt” from a point of view of “more personal intelligence, more collective, more from the intelligence of organizations”, given the importance it has in the current context.

Donaldson explained that the Barcelona City Council is currently developing a Government Measure, a strategy to incorporate AI as an instrument for improving the provision of public services with special attention to the ethical implications in order to ensure that emerging technologies do not cause new discrimination.

In his speech, Marc Torrent explained the objectives of CIDAI and listed some of its projects for 2020, among which he highlighted the application of Deep Learning for the diagnosis of lung tumors, the prediction of accident rates to improve traffic control infrastructures, the improvement of selective recycling and the application of Machine Learning to encrypted data sets while maintaining the privacy of the information, among other applications.

Trends and challenges

The congress featured a presentation by Microsoft’s General Manager of Artificial Intelligence and Innovation, David Carmona, who addressed the main scenarios where AI is being applied in the current context, as well as the most important technological trends.

In his opinion, after a period focused on pilot tests and the evaluation and exploration of Artificial Intelligence, “the current crisis has accelerated the phase of putting AI connected to business results into operation.”

“We are seeing how many companies are using it to respond to the crisis in much more tactical scenarios and at the same time we will see, when we gradually return to a new normal, how Artificial Intelligence will become a clear tool of differentiation and will be part of the redefinition of businesses,” he explained.

Along these lines, Carmona highlighted process optimization, employee productivity and customer service as three scenarios in which “Artificial Intelligence can help very simply today without the need for large investments.”

The director of research in Deep Learning at Google DeepMind, Oriol Vinyals, also spoke about the latest trends in the field of machine learning and gave an overview of the challenges and advances in Deep Learning that are expected in the coming years.

“Many times the easiest solutions end up being the best” to be able to develop products aimed at solving a problem, said Vinyals, for whom the time between the development of an idea and its implementation on the market is shortening thanks to the improvement of communication and procedures in which researchers, product managers and software engineers are involved.

The AI ​​& Big Data Congress, a benchmark for professionals, suppliers and companies

The two days of the AI ​​& Big Data Congress, one of the benchmark events in this field for professionals, suppliers and companies, focused on the present and future of Artificial Intelligence and data analytics and on advanced technological solutions in this field. The program included the presentation of innovative proposals by everis, Microsoft, SDG Group and Oracle and addressed the present and future of the democratization of Artificial Intelligence, as well as the application of this technology for the management of crisis situations, with contributions from the Generalitat de Catalunya, Hospital del Mar, Fhios and Weoptimize.

He has also presented success stories in the implementation of Artificial Intelligence, based on contributions from companies and organizations such as the i2CAT Foundation, Simon, Adevinta, Mango, everis, CaixaBank, CTTI and Verbio.

The congress also discussed the fairness and interpretability of Artificial Intelligence algorithms, based on the vision of Eurecat, the UPC, GMV and AIS, and presented pioneering applications from SDG Group, Eurecat, CVC, Pal Robotics, Microsoft, the i2CAT Foundation, Kostal, BSC and the University of Valladolid. A session entitled “Architectures, platforms and infrastructures” also took place with Minsait, Unicaja, Lifull Connect and a workshop given by Microsoft and everis.

The AI ​​& Big Data Congress is a CIDAI initiative coordinated by Eurecat and has the sponsorship of the Generalitat de Catalunya, SDG Group, Microsoft, everis and CaixaBank.

Framed within the Catalonia.AI strategy of the Generalitat of Catalonia and coordinated by Eureka, CIDAI is a public-private initiative that includes the Barcelona City Council, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, the Computer Vision Center, everis, the i2CAT Foundation, Microsoft and SDG Group.

Its objectives are the generation, validation and transfer of reliable Artificial Intelligence technologies with high added value to promote innovation in the country’s strategic sectors, including public services and the third sector, and the identification of innovative technological proposals from leading research in Artificial Intelligence, to disseminate them to companies and institutions.