In the tenth installment of El Periscopio about artificial intelligence with Oleguer Sagarra, co-founder and co-CEO of Dribia, we talk about AI from a realistic and reflective perspective that allows us to stop and think about the possibilities of this world that is trending.
Dribia is a data science innovation studio. It is composed of about 32 people, who make customized solutions for their clients, solving problems through data mining.
The artificial intelligence tool is all over the headlines, and everything is very spectacular, but Oleguer tells us that only the experiments that go well are shown and warns us about AI: "They are very interesting and powerful tools, but also very new and with many limitations".
"They are machines that sound human, but they are not," says Oleguer.
Just because the result is similar to that of a human does not mean that the process behind it is the same. ChatGPT says things that are very good, but with details that are wrong.
Sagarra believes that the tool will be useful, but he does not know which ones will and will not win. He stresses the importance of it being useful and secure. Otherwise it will not be used in critical applications.
Our guest defines AI as the ability of a computer to process data and successfully solve very specific tasks, minimizing external help.
And he says that the key to the technology lies in scaling processes. With the help of artificial intelligence we are trying to scale processes that humans do more slowly in a way that is similar to ours and with much greater speed.
That's not to say that computers do better than humans. We underestimate ourselves, but we have a brain that does some pretty amazing things," says Sagarra.
"Artificial intelligence is not going to replace us."
It's going to allow us to do more things in less time. It's going to do the tasks with less value to us. And if we use it well, it will increase our productivity.
He adds that we are the only ones capable of shaping our knowledge and interaction with the real world. We have senses and we perceive the environment. But machines don't have a causal model of the world. They can create many things on their own, but we will have to be there to validate them.
He also says that behind a technology, there is a human being and says that it is important to take responsibility for the technology we create. The responsibility for what an automated process does belongs to the person or persons behind it.
Many companies believe that capturing data is the best thing to do, but it is expensive. It involves lawyers, data protection laws, technology, ... and if you don't exploit it well, you have an asset that only means expenses.
Oleguer talks about data quality and tells us that people get very obsessed with it. But he tells us that the important thing is that they are good enough for what you want to use them for.
You can see that when you put them to work.
On the democratization of technology, he tells us that it is all very well, but it is false . Everyone can access it, but there are only 5 companies in the world that have the necessary resources to work with it. It is a monopoly.
In non-value-added processes, technology can help a lot. Prototyping is a clear example: the ideation phase is our responsibility, but when it comes to executing the prototype, technology makes a huge difference.
Humans are known to provide useful feedback and close ideas when they can touch them. Prototyping is the key point of all these creative processes where technological and non-technological processes can make a big change.
"AI will not replace you, someone using AI will". Oleguer reminds us. We should not be afraid of technology, we should use it well.
Sagarra doesn't ask anything of the AI. He asks something from the people who use it. We are wrongly accustomed to perceive ourselves as consumers of technology and we are users.
As users, we use tools because we understand what is behind them. Not everything, but enough to have some confidence in them.
It asks us not to give up on them. And it urges us to ask the right questions that demand the transparency and trust necessary to use the technology that surrounds us.
