Strong commitment to AI by the representative of the European Commission in Spain

BarcelonaThe headquarters of Foment del Treball has been filled with proclamations in defense of Barcelona, Catalonia, and Europe not missing the train of artificial intelligence (AI), in the face of the flood of alerts and fear that has shaken the world in recent hours. The representative of the European Commission in Spain, Daniel Calleja, has clearly positioned himself in favor: "We must invest more and better in AI. Barcelona has a great opportunity, and so does Spain," he claimed this Tuesday at a congress organized by the Catalan employers' association.

Without mincing words, Calleja has shown himself to be in favor of "accelerating the adoption of AI" by companies and "investing in infrastructure, data centers, and connectivity," despite the reservations they generate due to high energy consumption and environmental resource usage. Faced with the widespread concern over the capabilities of the new technology, the representative of the community executive in the State has offered a clear recipe: "The answer lies in risk management through common regulations."

For Calleja, AI "can be an important part of our response" to the challenges in productivity and competitiveness diagnosed in the now famous Draghi and Letta reports. In his view, the European Union is creating a "favorable ecosystem" to jump on the AI train and is well-positioned internationally, even though it is currently the United States and China that dominate the development of this technology.

On the other hand, the EU representative has defended that "sovereignty does not mean producing everything ourselves," in reference to Europe, but rather "not depending on a single supplier." In the Spanish sphere, he has also shown optimism: according to him, Spain is "at the average, or slightly above," in terms of AI adoption, but he has insisted that "it must be accelerated."

Catalonia and Barcelona, committed to AI

From the Generalitat, the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, has assured that Catalonia wants to "play this race [of AI] to the fullest", taking into account the "sustainability standards". He has committed to defending this from the Government, "in the face of some regulations that are appearing these days".

According to his point of view, not advancing in AI means condemning the Catalan business fabric to falling behind. For this reason, he believes it is necessary to gain infrastructure and supercomputing capacity, and has asked the administrations not to "turn their backs" on the strategy.

In the same vein, the fourth deputy mayor of Barcelona, Jordi Valls, has insisted on the commitment of the municipal government: "A city like Barcelona needs at this moment to clearly bet on AI", but –in his opinion– not at any price. He has admitted that Barcelona cannot "close its eyes to the debates that must be raised" regarding this new technology. "We will not accept everything they put on the table", he warned.

Valls has labeled as an "oligopoly" the US companies that control the development of artificial intelligence, and has agreed that, in its beginnings, "the ethical debate was set aside and a corporate architecture was structured". Despite Barcelona's commitment to AI, he has defended the human component in decision-making: "Having a lot of data does not necessarily mean making an intelligent decision".