Carme Artigas: "AI regulation would guarantee its ethical use in politics".

The conference "The Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Politics and Government", organized yesterday by ESIC University and ALEPH brought together renowned professionals in the field of technology to share with attendees different perspectives on how artificial intelligence (AI) is playing a crucial role in political decision-making and the efficiency of government services .

After some words of welcome by Pablo Martín, academic director of the educational institution ALEPH, which teaches together with ESIC University the Master in Marketing, Communication and Political Consultancy among other postgraduate courses and courses, Carme Artigas, co-chair of the UN High Level Advisory Body on AI, took the floor first and shared her vision on how to regulate AI to ensure its ethical and beneficial use in the political arena. "The European law is a great milestone, and also what we are doing from the organizational bodies, as Spain is the first country in the world to draw up a charter of rights and criteria," she explained.

In addition, he added that, since December 2020, a right of Artificial Intelligence was demanded, which could regulate "that an algorithm does not discriminate against the right to a second human opinion when an automated system refuses medical treatment, and nobody paid any attention to us. When in Europe we were already discussing the humanistic aspects of artificial intelligence and how to protect the risks, everyone was looking down on us, because the European regulatory processes are quite long". Finally, he concluded that, in Europe, "we regulate the misuses of Artificial Intelligence. We don't want anything that involves tampering with the human mind and we don't want AI to be used for massive government control. We are fully aware of Artificial Intelligence, but it must be done in an international way".

Jesús Herrero, CEO of Red.es, shared different examples of how AI is being implemented in government projects in Spain. Among them, he highlighted that "at Red.es we apply technology in our processes, to be more agile, more accessible and make the procedure simple for companies, for citizens and for the administration itself. In fact, artificial intelligence has increased productivity, although it was thought that it had arrived to eliminate human labor, but this has not been the case. We have dedicated ourselves to creating new programs that allow teams to listen to citizens". He also explained how, with the Kit Digital program,"Red.es has designed a system that uses robotization tools and artificial intelligence that has allowed checks to be carried out in just 3 minutes, allowing grants to be awarded in just 15 days".

On the other hand, Olga Gil, researcher specialized in the regulation of technology at the Institute of Applied Computer Science (ICCA) and the Complutense School of Government, spoke about the advances and challenges in the application of AI in academia and government, with emphasis on what concerns universities, where she stressed that "the cross-cutting areas that solve social problems are, now, the area where we have to focus on.the cross-cutting areas that solve social problems are, now, the area where we have to put the focus...".. The departments that work in a transversal way compete with an added difficulty. And that is that when you present a project specialized in one area, the evaluators know about one subject, but they don't know about all of them".

Gil also stressed the importance of literacy in terms of artificial intelligence and knowing how to use an algorithm, adding that "the focus of universities is to know what we are going to do with artificial intelligence. Regulation is not the only answer, we have many challenges in Europe because we should not be complacent, we do not have the economies of scale that the European Union is trying to build and we lack a single cultural market."

And finally, Román Robles, Councilor for Procurement, Internal Regime, Citizen Services and Digital Administration of the Galapagar City Council, spoke about AC Tool, a virtual assistant based on AI designed to facilitate communication and decision making in the political context. During the explanation, he highlighted the importance for him that the City Council of Galapagar is a benchmark in innovation, where he explained "setting up technology just for the sake of setting it up does not work, we must have a purpose. We have to fulfill the hypothesis that artificial intelligence can help me to improve processes, since I will be able to do the only thing that Chat-GPT cannot do, which is to listen to my neighbors".

He concluded his speech with a reflection: "I am a councilman, I have to give exceptional attention to my citizens. I would go down to the registry and all I saw were lines, and what we did was to investigate why citizens were going to the institution and create an automation of the process and, I can say that we have achieved it thanks to artificial intelligence."

All participants in the day were able to understand and clarify their doubts about the intersection between technology, politics and government, and the debate was opened on the possible replacement of people by artificial intelligence, where Carme Artigas shared her opinion saying that "the replaceable profile is going to be that of the intern, so earlier training is needed so that this does not happen".

On the other hand, Olga Gil, in the field of education stressed that "we have not found that the teacher's profile is replaceable, although universities are working on implementing the use of artificial intelligence in the most beneficial way possible".

Jesús Herrero, added that "the issue with technology is almost one of self-esteem. The change is in training, but other skills are also very noteworthy: courses, self-training and knowing the language of artificial intelligence."