How is technology being applied in the fight against the pandemic? Artificial intelligence is playing a very important role from three points of view: to help in the design of a vaccine and effective treatment; in medical decision-making such as assisting in the interpretation of chest radiographs or predicting the evolution of patients based on symptoms and clinical history, and to support public decision-making. This last area is where we work, making analysis and modeling of human mobility on a large scale, key to the spread of a pandemic; developing computational epidemiological models that allow us to predict how the epidemic can evolve under different scenarios of containment of the population or percentages of infected, and developing predictive models of the number of ICUs, deaths, hospitalizations, etc ... What is most important? Are you attracted to technology? It is a key tool to improve the quality of life. We are in the fourth industrial revolution and my area is strategic from a political, economic and social point of view, because it is transforming society. Is there something wrong with it? Like any tool, it can be good or bad depending on how you use it. In artificial intelligence, we must look at four dimensions: the legal - is our system adapted to a reality in which nonhumans are going to make decisions? Ethics, the social - we don't talk enough about technology as a society if we think about the importance that it has in our lives-, and the economic and labor. In each of these dimensions, we must define actions to ensure that we have a legal and ethical framework, that we are educating and using it for political and social purposes, and that it will help us prosper economically without leaving anyone behind. How difficult ... Almost thirty countries have elaborated their national artificial intelligence strategies, and Spain is working on it. The European Commission asked member countries to do so before July 2019, we are late because of the political situation, but there is an inter-ministerial commission that is preparing it. How can technology benefit society? What we should aspire to is to achieve greater progress, that is, an improvement in the quality of life of all people, the rest of the living beings and the planet. But there is no guarantee that any technological development will do good to progress. What has a greater potential? The area of ​​health and well-being, for example, to automatically analyze millions of radiological tests and detect tumors, analysis of medical records automatically to predict results based on some treatments compared to others, the bracelets, watches and smart clothing, sensors embedded in our cupboard that allow us to monitor our physiological levels ... A precision medicine can be made: personalized, preventive, predictive and continuous thanks to the ubiquity of technology. Is it being implemented already? Little by little: there are already wereables and smart watches that have helped people with cardiovascular problems to detect them. Or in people with chronic diseases, where these devices remind them to take their medication and monitor them without having to go to a medical center. Is artificial intelligence already here? On the mobile phone, if you talk to him and he understands you; if you take a photo with him and you get a little square where my face is; if you use Google Maps, because there are many ways to go from point A to point B, and use traffic predictions; And when you participate in any social network or search for something in Google, all that is artificial intelligence. It is pure software, and being invisible it is ubiquitous, it has penetrated all spheres of our lives without us realizing it. What will be the next step? There are very active areas of research: causality inference, incorporation of semantics, knowledge of context, make it more difficult to hack systems, incorporate human factors such as algorithmic non-discrimination or transparency. Do they know everything about us by data? Our interactions with the physical world increasingly leave a fingerprint, if I take the subway or the bus, if I park the car or pay with a credit card or use the mobile phone. This is all a digital representation of human activity. This reflection, analyzed with artificial intelligence techniques, allows us to infer very important and personal aspects of each one. Whoever accesses this data has a lot of power. Therefore, everyone should show interest in this topic and ask themselves, for example, before installing an app, what information they ask you for. If they are not used ethically, the consequences can be very serious. How is it possible that education has not changed? For years we have defended an educational reform, in China they teach artificial intelligence from childhood. A core subject of computational thinking, as important as knowing how to read or mathematics, should be included, in which algorithmic thinking, programming, data, networks and hardware would be learned. In the UK it has been done since 2015. And creativity and social and emotional intelligence should also be encouraged in schools, because by using technology we do not develop so much skills that define us as human beings. In Spain, have we lost the technology train? No, it is included in the European context, which is responding and trying to accelerate. There is great potential, good universities, spectacular infrastructures and creativity, but we have a great aversion to risk, and those who do not risk do not invent. Will we fight machines? We must look at technology as something that can complement us and do things better than we do, knowing that we do others much better. Things do not have to be feared, but understood. There will be an automation of certain tasks, but also a massive generation of new jobs, most of them technological in nature, so you have to prepare.

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