Artificial intelligence is flourishing, including with entrepreneurs: applications and measures to avoid risks

“This is a unique time for artificial intelligence (AI) […] Generative AI has taken us from a potential winter to a spring with no end in sight”. This is one of the definitive pieces of information that Cristian Canton, Head of Engineering – Responsible AI at Meta, shared at BBVA Spark’s latest ‘Innovation Masterclass’. Called the era of performance and possibilities’, the event brought together more than 540 attendees and focused on one of the hottest technologies this year, especially in the wake of ChatGPT: artificial intelligence.

This field has seen a dramatic qualitative leap in the last decade, accelerating its growth and adoption worldwide. According to the IDC Worldwide Semiannual Artificial Intelligence Tracker report, the global AI market will hit a value of 900 billion dollars by 2026. This same consulting firm estimates that investment in AI-focused systems will grow 26.9% in 2023 to 154 billion dollars.

Against this background, Argentina is positioned among the ten countries with the highest private investment in this tech, with figures topping 1.5 billion dollars. The United States, China and the United Kingdom lead the rankings, which also include other European countries, such as Germany and France, and Asian regions like South Korea, Israel and India. When it comes to Spain, the government has presented its National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, a roadmap to promote AI development with an allotted 600 million euros for 2021-2023. This new ecosystem reflects the changes that AI has experienced in recent years and opens up a new context that companies and startups can harness to optimise their services.

A new horizon

“We’ve gone from a technology that posed major practical challenges in the early 2000s to a technology that is now everywhere”, said Canton at the session held by BBVA Spark. The expert took a deep dive into two key points in the development of this tech: the rise of deep learning with the advances in neural networks in 2015-2016, which expanded the widespread use of artificial intelligence in society; and the recent breakthrough of generative AI, which uses algorithms to generate new content, from text and image to audio and video.

There are two verticals that stand out from among the new models that this new branch of AI is offering the public: generative language models, such as OpenAI’s Chat-GPT and Microsoft and Meta’s Llama2, and creation models, such as OpenAI’s Dall-E and Meta’s I-JEPA.

“Generative language models, which are capable of learning using vast amounts of data and can mimic human conversation in any language, have emerged in the last year and are changing the industry: they’re a revolution”, noted Meta’s expert. And in reference to the creation algorithms, he added: “Being able to tell the computer what you want to see, and it can create something that has never existed before is driving us to a point where we will be able to produce things that have never been seen before”.

Benefits for companies

Information classification, user recommendations, anomaly detection and forecasting different variables are just some of the areas where businesses can apply AI. “There is a part of AI in every part of the corporate spectrum”, Canton said.

This scenario offers myriad opportunities not only for large multinationals, like Meta, but also for the overall entrepreneurial ecosystem. “It’s a really important time for both startup investors and creators”, said the expert. The numbers back up his claim: almost €30 million were invested in AI-focused startups in Spain alone in 2023, according to data from El Referente.

“Interest in Artificial Intelligence is growing, even though the market has yet to explode”, says Javier Orús, director and co-founder of PredictLand, a startup that specialises in big data, AI and the application of data to improve and optimise its clients’ processes. “Our clients have needs or challenges, like increasing sales or the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and we help them up their efficiency”, Orús explains.

For this entrepreneur, one of the biggest advantages that AI offers companies is that it can “learn what others have done before” and perform in a similar way in other cases. “This makes it possible to automate a huge number of tasks that up until now required someone with expertise in the business, which saves a great deal of time”, he explains.

These advantages can be applied to all companies, regardless of their sector or size, as well as to all business areas, “especially predictively to anticipate future situations”, according to this expert. “ These tools give employees more time to add value where they really have value to add”, he concludes.

The risks of artificial intelligence

AI’s possibilities are endless, but companies also need to consider the risks involved when adopting it. “Artificial intelligence has no common sense, so it’s important to apply the human context to all major decisions”, says Idoia Salazar, president and founder of the Observatory for the Social and Ethical Impact of Artificial Intelligence (OdiseIA), an organisation created to promote the ethical use of AI.

She underscores that the risks of artificial intelligence do not come from the technology itself, which is a “tool”, but from the way it is used, whether “unconsciously” or “maliciously”, which can lead to biases. “Ultimately, you train the model with loads of data. If you don’t take it into account and don’t remove variables such as gender, race, social status or other issues, the decision the model makes can discriminate against a certain type of audience”, explains Salazar.

Therefore, entrepreneurs who want to start using artificial intelligence “have to be careful during the design, during training and once they deploy it, during the whole process”. However, the responsible use of this technology not only involves the corporate sphere, but also the public. “AI is a tool that companies use: if people are not made aware of this fact, they are going to be easily manipulated”, explains Salazar.

Within this framework, the European Union is working on new legislation to regulate the use of AI , including making its use easier to explain and more transparent, and including fines for companies that develop malicious systems. “We are interacting with a tremendously negative technology if it is misused, which is why we have to regulate it”, says Salazar.

Artificial intelligence can help companies improve their efficiency and processes, although it has to be used responsibly if this technology is going to bring real benefits to society. “Doing things the right way is a must”, Canton said at the ‘Innovation Masterclass’. “Everyone who plays a role in developing AI has to think about responsible use. Otherwise, the future is going to be quite tricky.”