"In artificial intelligence we have advanced ten years in one", considers Montse Guardia, director of Strategy and head of the society area of Mobile World Capital Barcelona (MWCapital). In times of rapid changes and innovations that quickly affect people, the Digital Future Society (DFS), the initiative created by this foundation together with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation of the Government of Spain, tries to reflect on the ethical and social impact of technological metamorphosis.In addition, the DFS wants to transcend the strictly reflexive with "empirical and experimental collaborative work, learning by testing and doing”, says Guardia. It is about mitigating the negative impacts of new technologies on society and enhancing the positive ones.
For this reason, they have a social innovation laboratory and each quarter they define a delivery, such as the publication of valuable analytical reports showing tangible proposals. “Society still has fears about technology. But we must assume this relationship and promote digital inclusion”, says Guardia. “In Barcelona we know what we are talking about when we talk about innovation”, she maintains.
During the MWC, on March 1, the DFS organizes a forum with 14 expert speakers, eight of whom are leading local voices "recognized worldwide in their areas of knowledge." For three hours, they will reflect on "the design, construction and use of the technological innovations of the 21st century". Everything will start with an inspirational speech by the Secretary of State for Digitization and Artificial Intelligence, Carme Artigas.
From here, the summit will hold three round tables. The first will deal with neurotechnologies and their role in the new digital reality, covering the relationship between man and machine and the digital divide. One of the speakers will be Rafael Yuste, professor neurologist at Columbia University. There will also be the presence of Ana Maiques, researcher and executive director of Neuroelectronics.
The second topic that will be discussed will be ethical approaches in immersive realities, analyzing innovations such as the metaverse. For this, experts such as the philosopher Carissa Véliz, associate professor at the University of Oxford, and Mónica Taher, a businesswoman who disseminates financial inclusion, will be present.
The third round table will focus on the relationship between the technological revolution and the planet, the ecosystem, people and other living beings. You will be able to listen to profiles such as Guillermo Martínez Gaunas-Vivas, head of Ayúdame3D, an entity that has distributed 3D-printed arms to make life easier for people with disabilities around the world; or Christopher Fabian, a technologist who works for Unicef. “We want to show how technology can improve the planet”, says Montse Guardia. She considers that “the ecological and digital transition are twins”.
During the summit, the DFS will also show some of its programs. “The 1,000 people who will visit us will know our impact”, considers Montse Guardia. "We want to mark a before and after, encourage critical thinking," she envisions. For her, at the moment there is a "change of pace" and the work must be "accelerated" so that the changes are incorporated with a positive result from a social point of view.
In this sense, one of the main fields of study at present is artificial intelligence due to the leap in scale that it is making. One of the best known examples of these advances is ChatGPT. "The raison d'être of the DFS is to analyze these changes at an ethical level," sums up the director of Strategy at MWCapital.
According to her, the main current challenge is to fight for "digital inclusion" so that "we all benefit from the same space." How to get it? For Guardia, the only way is by "conjugating the verb to collaborate." "Sometimes it's complex," she admits. According to her, one of the keys lies in the collaboration between public and private institutions, also in the sense of being able to scale the solutions designed to reach a large number of the population. And it is that the objective of the DFS is also “finalist”, seeking a pragmatic meaning to all the work of reflection.
