The “conversation” held between Lorena Jaume-Palasí (AlgorithmWatch co-founder) and Ramón López Mántaras (Research Professor and Director, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute) holded yesterday at Palau Macaya (Barcelona, Funcació Ernest Lluch and Obra social LaCaixa)  result in a very exciting and stimulating debate on some ethical questions posed by robotics and the application of what we call “Artificial Intelligence” (IA), although it is still “competence without comprehension”.

They emphasized the importance of human-technology collaboration in this new revolution, with the aim of promoting the improvement of the quality of life of people and general well-being of the society. As a consequence, it is of paramount importance not to lose sight of maintaining a “human centered” vision, and to “co-create” engaging citizens and inter-disciplinary teams to participate in the process. They pointed to some challenges derived from the “homophilia” that favor certain algorithms used in the modeling processes for service platforms and social networks and the risk of attributing excessive value to the predictions that can be made through the algorithms. Finally, they estressed the need to address this new paradigm from a different perspective since many private initiatives such as Google or Facebook are producing today not only services but are also providing the society with essential infrastructures -up to now held by the States. They both  claimed the need of transparency and some ethical principles to be applied.  More info at: http://www.fundacioernestlluch.org/es/actividad/inteligencia-artificial-robotizacion-y-cuarta-revolucion-digital