From online shopping to the health fight against coronavirus, "there is no economic sector or social field that will escape the influence" of artificial intelligence, the report Digital Society in Spain in 2019 , compiled by the Fundación Telefónica and given to meet this Thursday.

In Europe, there are already 1,600 startups dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI), according to MMC Ventures, a trend that would be promoted during the covid-19 pandemic and the restrictions on travel and human contacts that it has caused. The United Kingdom, with 479 of this total of emerging businesses, France (217) and Germany (196) would occupy the podium by number of AI startups , but Spain follows them in fourth place and 166 of these projects, despite having a smaller population (half that of Germany). "The difference is that only a tenth of them has reached a state of maturity, which is why our country has a much less mature ecosystemthan those of the three leading countries in the sector ", reflects this annual study.

Even before this health crisis, the health area concentrated 21% of applications based on artificial intelligence on the continent , above other topics such as finance (18%), communication and entertainment (12%), retail (11%), transport and travel (8%), infrastructure and public services (8%), education (6%) and agriculture (5%).

Artificial intelligence trends in 2019 (Source: CB Insights)

The health branch will clearly be reinforced as a consequence of this pandemic. In fact, the consulting firm Grant Thornton recently examined which technologies have made the greatest contribution so far in the fight against the virus, concluding that 53% of initiatives have turned to big data and artificial intelligence, 22% to robotics, 12% to cybersecurity, 11% to blockchain and 2% to chatbots .

The official self-diagnosis application AsistenciaCOVID-19 is already working in Spain and work is being done on the European project to create an application that detects contacts with infected citizens via mobile phone, an initiative that will have a pilot in the Canary Islands community, such as As communicated this Wednesday in Congress Nadia Calviño, Vice President of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation. The Secretary of State for Digitization and Artificial Intelligence, led by Carme Artigas, and which has been inaugurated in this legislature, depends on that department.

"Artificial intelligence has become the most disruptive technology called to revolutionize all sectors of society. Its applications range from online shopping to disease diagnosis and treatment services to the rise of the use of voice in electronic devices", indicates the study by the Fundación Telefónica.

Attendees spread the word

In the daily life of citizens, artificial intelligence has demonstrated its progressive implementation, above all through its derived applications for voice. Technology consists of the imitation of human cognitive functions by machines, and few activities represent it better than a virtual assistant at the moment.

The 43% of Internet users in the world use systems speech recognition , especially common in Asia, with the communities online India and China over the barrier and 50%. "We are already surrounded by artificial intelligence, four out of 10 speak to machines," said Pablo Gonzalo, head of the Digital Culture and Space Area at Fundación Telefónica, during a presentation of the report led by Carmen Morenés, CEO of Fundación Telefónica, and led by the journalist Marta García Aller.

Digital, but not for work

Drop down

European notices

Spain is in position 11 in the digitization ranking of the 28 nations that make up the European Union. However, the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) shows a decrease in the second half of the table if human capital is taken into account, with a 17th place. In this area of ​​digital competence of citizens, it should be of particular concern position 18 granted by the European Commission to Spain in the section of presence in the labor market of professionals specialized in information and communication technologies (ICT).

In addition to other characteristics to improve in Spain, such as the poor digital capabilities of its workers (something quantified by the European Union), Industry 4.0 lacks the recommended development . For example, 23% of medium and large companies use cloud computing , cloud computing , but the figure remains at only 9% for micro-enterprises.

Underdevelopment in microenterprise

As this study points out, big data is "even more anecdotal" in the Spanish productive sector, especially if it is seen beyond the large corporations. In a little over a tenth of SMEs and large companies, these big data are used, huge amounts of information that require specific software are processed, but the quota remains a minuscule 2% in micro-companies with less than 10 employees, a specific type of company that actually represents the majority 95% of the country's fabric. "80% of these companies are in a basic or initial digitization, all this before the crisis," Gonzalo has indicated.

A digital reinvention of Spain could boost the economy around 1.8% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) until 2025, as reported by the consulting firm McKinsey.

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