Latin America still views AI with distrust

The rapid progress of artificial intelligence (AI) and its application for various tasks and at the business level is rapidly transforming society, But in Latin America “there is still a high level of mistrust” towards it, an expert from the region on this new technology told EFE this Friday.

“Great restrictions on access” to this technology in the region, “employees’ fear of losing their jobs” and, above all, “general mistrust” when it comes to sharing personal data are factors that hinder its development, said Alejandro Anderlić. , Director of Government Affairs and Public Policy at technology company Salesforce.

The American cloud-based software company is participating today at the Council of American Societies (COAS) annual symposium, which is celebrating its Bravo 2023 awards gala tonight.

In an interview with EFE, Anderlić pointed out that in this context of general mistrust towards artificial intelligence in the region, 76.8% believe that sharing their personal data “involves more risks than benefits”, with the factor of “low level of cyber security”.

AI risks and ethics
The Argentine admits that artificial intelligence, although it has “huge potential”, is a risk. For this reason, Salesforce advocates “ethical artificial intelligence” which refers to the good use of technology, since it is not good or bad, it all “depends on the use we put to it”.

As of 2018, Salesforce has an “Office of Ethics and Human Use” focused on implementing “trusted, accountable, inclusive and transparent” AI, held accountable through the Advisory Council for Ethical Use.

A lawyer also from Argentina’s Catholic University highlighted the nature of artificial intelligence as a “powerful tool” that “helps, thanks to its processing capacity, to suggest ideas and content that people can develop.”

At the business level, the potential applications of artificial intelligence are “enormous”, for example to schedule meetings, organize files, manage administrative tasks, write code, design products or create content and marketing strategies.

It even serves to provide customer service through chatbots or accelerate scientific discoveries, automating tasks such as those mentioned above, which allows teams to be “more productive and efficient,” emphasizes Anderlic, who was director of corporate affairs at Microsoft.

He wanted to make it clear that at Salesforce, “our customers’ data is not our products,” but they belong to the customers: “Respecting privacy, security and data ownership is essential for the technology to be trusted.”

This is one of the key points of so-called generative AI: using its capacity to generate content without losing control over the information shared in the query – the space where we write to the AI ​​what we want it to do.

The fourth industrial revolution and the gap
He did not hesitate to confirm that we are immersed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where AI, machine learning, cloud computing, data analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT) “have a profound impact on the way we live in the world of work”.

A revolution characterized by three key factors that distinguish it from previous ones: first, “the astonishing speed of change”; then, an “impact” that is not limited to technology itself, but “profoundly transforms the interconnected systems in our society,” from politics to economics to the way countries function.

Asked whether artificial intelligence can increase the social gap, Anderlić explained that this is a very important issue in Latin America. For this reason, Salesforce considers the “democratization” of this technology crucial, meaning that everyone has access to the technology and its benefits.

“Latin America has great potential in this regard, because it has human capacities and is a nursery of ideas that can improve the region,” he pointed out.