Adolfo Mesquita Nunes, partner in the Public Law and Regulation practice at Pérez-Llorcaformer Secretary of State for Tourism and author of the new book “Algorithmocracia” will talk about the impact of these technologies at the Vodafone Business Conference, where he will be one of the speakers. The 7th edition of the conference, which will also feature presentations by futurist Andrew Grill and Vodafone IoT leader Phil Skipper, will take place on November 27th in the auditorium of the Rectory of Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
What do you want to talk about in your presentation at the conference?
Basically, demonstrating how today each one of us, individually, but also in our organizations, are permanently connected and how our lives, our commercial offers, our proposals, and how companies, institutions and the State will interact with us, assuming our permanent connectivity.
And this means that many business models will take this into account and will be born because of it. At the same time, this generates ethical, legal and regulatory challenges, and a whole new understanding of what this connectivity is and how far it can go and what we do with it, and this is where the questions of social intelligence and its limits come in.
Are you going to talk a little about what’s in the latest book “Algorithmocracy”?
I don’t have to say much because it’s not really the topic, although it may touch on it in some cases. In other words, showing people how they are more connected than they think, even when they are sleeping, at least some of them. And how the data we transmit, the information we transmit while we are connected, allows third parties to offer, propose, sell, suggest business, life, association proposals and the amount of business that will arise from there, but also the amount of challenges and protections that we will have to take care of.
Therefore, in essence it is a reflection on the exciting aspects of this connectivity, but also a reflection on the precautions and the choice of suppliers that we must take, precisely taking these risks and precautions into account.
What will this require at the level of leadership in Portugal, where we have the majority of companies are SMEs and many still have a very hierarchical, very traditional type of management?
I think that hyperconnectivity, which is the theme of the conference, is even an opportunity for other companies, small or not, to challenge the incumbents, because there is a whole sea of new businesses that arise precisely from this circumstance.
And in fact, this is evident in the entrepreneurial ecosystem regarding Artificial Intelligence issues, which is on this hyperconnectivity that artificial intelligence will work, countless business opportunities arise, in other words, I would say that it is an opportunity more than a barrier.
What kind of business are we talking about here?
From the moment we are hyperconnected and with the data we leave, the ability to use this data to do new business can involve, for example, helping companies to better find out who they should sell to and what they should sell and when they should sell it.
For example, finding the ability to better segment and personalize your activity towards your end customer. The possibility of having services fully adapted to each person’s daily life and in a different way.
For example, having a tariff that is personalized?
Today, with the data that will be possible to have about each of us, it will be possible to have a personalized relationship, whether in terms of prices or in terms of content and sales proposals.
Do you think Portugal is well positioned, as it has a very good connectivity infrastructure, to take advantage of this new era?
I think so. Portugal has always been an ‘early adopter’ country with the capacity to quickly join new digital ecosystems. And what has been the framework that the government has given regarding the digital agenda seems to be in the sense of taking advantage of the opportunities that Artificial Intelligence brings to position the country as a right country for investment to be made here.
The announcement of the AI gigafactory is also another sign that, from a public policy perspective, attention is being paid to these issues.
Is there a specific sector that will be discussed in the presentation? There is a lot of talk about industry and healthcare, because of sensorization, remote patient monitoring.
There is health, there is infrastructure, there is corrective and predictive maintenance, there is transport, there are tariffs, there are dynamic prices, there are public services, the provision of public services, there is banking with credit scoring, in other words, there are many areas.
I think there is no area that is immune to what official intelligence will do with the data. There is no immune area.
Regarding safeguards on its use, do you believe this should be done at European level?
I believe it should be done from a regulatory point of view across Europe, as is already the case in some cases, but it should also be done on a company-by-company basis, specifically defining what position they want to have on these matters, which takes into account their ethical perspective on how they want to relate to their customers and their data.
How do you believe people’s lives will change in the next one to two years due to these technologies?
Just think that ChatGPT three years ago did not exist as it does today. For us to understand the speed at which things are happening. Today we can write entire texts or compose a song in a short time with artificial intelligence. This five years ago was unthinkable. Therefore, over the next five years the transformation this brings to our lives will be quite incremental.