International Study
According to an international study published last September by the IBM firm, 21% of Information Technology professionals use artificial intelligence in Chile, a figure identical to the average record at the Latin American level.
According to the same research, almost 40 percent of companies in Chile are exploring AI adoption, encouraged by the effects of the Covid 19 pandemic and the need for more and better data on consumer behavior.
The uses of artificial intelligence in Chile have allowed significant improvements in customer service, security, cyber security, robotization and automation of processes, marketing and sales, in addition to processing complex flows of information to apply them in modeling projects or execution of works. It is applied in areas such as medicine, mining, agribusiness, e-commerce, human resources, telephony, Defense (Armed Forces), renewable energies, astronomy, among many others.
For example only, the largest supercomputer in Chile, whose capacity is equivalent to 30,000 desktop computers, is capable of performing multiple tasks such as processing all the information collected by the ALMA antennas, running algorithms to improve the distribution of schools in Chile, managing the frequency of trains in the Santiago Metro, in addition to analyzing fundamental data for the construction of works, considering seismic and climatic aspects.
World panorama with many lights and shadows
Along with the undeniable and necessary technological advances in Artificial Intelligence, there is also a perverse side that must be kept at bay. A couple of years ago, on the occasion of the cambridge analytics scandal, we had a categorical sample of how AI can be used to feed algorithms that are capable of manipulating people.
The elections of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro were involved in serious complaints, and Facebook had to explain and establish limits on hate speech.
The elaboration of large databases is a fundamental input of Artificial Intelligence, but the data collection process does not always meet minimum ethical standards, and in this scenario it ends up seriously affecting the privacy of people, without them being aware of it. the violation of his right.
A United Nations report He warned how often States and private companies have rushed to incorporate AI software, without due guarantees for the population.
"There have been many cases of people who have been unfairly treated by this technology, either because they have been denied social security benefits or because they have been arrested as a result of errors in facial recognition systems," said the Office of the High UN Human Rights Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet.
The document stated that in addition to “exposing people's private lives to companies and states, these data sets make individuals vulnerable in other ways. For example, improper access by third parties to that personal data has repeatedly exposed sensitive information of millions of people.”
In this framework, there may be serious and systematic violations of the right to privacy, including the autonomy of individuals and their right to establish details of their identity, or affect freedom of thought and opinion, including the right to a fair trial, product of a failed biometric recognition or that does not respect the principles expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“There have been many cases of people who have been unfairly treated by this technology, either because they have been denied social security benefits or because they have been arrested as a result of errors in facial recognition systems”
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet.
Biometric recognition works thanks to the comparison, within a database, of the digital representation of certain features of an individual, such as the face, fingerprint, eye iris, voice or the way of walking, with other traits.
As a result of this comparison, a greater or lesser probability is deduced that the person is indeed the one to be identified, even more so when the current logic is that these processes take place increasingly in real time and at a distance.
According to the UN report, "Remote biometric recognition dramatically increases the ability of state authorities to systematically identify and track people in public spaces, undermining people's ability to conduct their lives without being targeted." observed and has a direct negative effect on the exercise of the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, as well as freedom of movement.”
In the United Kingdom, the UBER company was sued and it faces questions over a facial recognition algorithm that blocks drivers, and which in practice has affected dark-skinned workers.
The rise of AI within companies is such that many people have been hired, fired or promoted in Europe as a result of running algorithms, committing injustices in the process that a human boss would have taken into account. From there to the EU is already beginning to study legislation in this regard.
The moratorium requested by the UN
“The greater the risk to human rights, the stricter the legal requirements for the use of artificial intelligence must be, Bachelet said when commenting on the aforementioned report.
"Given that assessing the dangers and how to overcome them may still take some time, States should now implement moratoriums on the use of technologies that present a high potential risk," he said.
But that is not all, since the UN also focuses on the possible access of government agencies to the set of data held by companies, which would increase the probability of arbitrary or illegal interference in the field of the right to privacy.
What is being done to regulate artificial intelligence in Chile
In this context, Chile has taken the issue seriously, and the universities where graduate or master's degrees related to AI are taught address the ethical issue as an obligatory subject. Of course this is not enough, and from now on the State - via the Ministry of Science - promoted a first document in order to have a National Artificial Intelligence Policy, work that had contributions from specialists from academia, industry, the public sector and civil society.
The text addresses enabling factors, the use and development of Artificial Intelligence in Chile and aspects of ethics and security, but it is not just about paper foundations, since it includes 70 priority actions and 180 initiatives that will be developed in the 2021-2030 period.
The Parliament was not far behind and last September it approved a constitutional reform that modified article 19 number 1 of our current Fundamental Charter, echoing the guidelines contained in the BRAIN project of the Spanish neurobiologist Rafael Yuste.
Both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies endorsed the call of Chilean and foreign scientists on the need to have a standard that protects, especially, brain activity and the information from it, against the advancement of neurotechnologies. Legal initiatives and their respective regulations will be fundamental to materialize the concepts contained in the modified article of the Constitution of the Republic.
As I expressed in a Letter to the Director published in the Diario Financiero, this reform "puts us at the forefront in terms of neurorights of constitutional rank, but they will be a dead letter if they do not materialize in laws that designate the body in charge of curbing any sinister use of Artificial Intelligence, and above all that there are exemplary sanctions, and with prison sentences for those unscrupulous who cross the barrier”.
These are the first steps of a framework that hopefully will be deepened in the Constitutional Convention, and serve as support for those who sweated the fat to get the votes for the establishment of the recently created Commission on Knowledge Systems, Cultures, Science, Technology, Arts and Estates. It is there where the conventional constituents must germinate a regulation that promotes new knowledge and the practical application of artificial intelligence in Chile, but always with the due safeguards and guarantees for humanity.
