The Artificial Intelligence elite debates from today in Santiago de Compostela the main challenges for the next few years

The global elite of Artificial Intelligence is debating from today until next Thursday in Santiago de Compostela the main advancements made in this field of research, as well as the challenges and issues it will face in the immediate future, with particular attention to the impact in areas such as regulation, ethical commitment, economic impact, and contributions to solving the main problems of humanity.

The European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2024), promoted by the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI), the Spanish Society for Artificial Intelligence (AEPIA), and organized by CiTIUS (Singular Research Center in Intelligent Technologies at the University of Santiago de Compostela - USC), features an extensive program including presentations of the latest scientific results, conferences, debate panels, workshops, and demonstrations to highlight the contribution of AI to the development of society.

During the opening lecture, Iryna Gurevych, Professor of Ubiquitous Knowledge Processing in the Department of Computer Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany, presented the Missci model, an innovative theoretical model of argumentation for fallacious reasoning and dismantling misleading narratives based on false interpretations of scientific publications.

In her presentation titled Towards Fact-Checking in the Real World with Large Language Models, she warned that “disinformation poses an increasing threat to our society and spreads very quickly,” due to the volume of information and the relevance of its content. She explained that this information often interests a large number of people and gave as an example the severe public health impact of fake news related to Covid-19 and the use of chloroquine as a treatment, or misinformation that raised doubts about vaccines.

Professor Gurevych reminded the audience that people's beliefs often do not depend on claims and rational reasoning, but on credible content that makes the statement "seem more trustworthy," such as scientific publications or visual content that has been manipulated or comes from unrelated contexts. "Humans tend to believe information more easily when it comes to us visually, through images," she added.

Gurevych proposed automating the contextualization of images to achieve this, because humans are able to "take into account the source of a statement and its possible motivations." She explained that in automatic verification processes, "the origin must be considered and assessed, as context is needed to find and use evidence based on context, analyzing basic aspects such as the source of the photo, location and date of origin, or the very reason for the photo."

To combat disinformation, she argued, it is necessary to explain "Why was the statement believed to be true? Why is the statement false? And why is the alternative explanation correct?"

Gurevych presented her efforts to identify and dismantle misleading narratives based on false interpretations of scientific publications and showed how to use large multimodal language models (LLMs) to detect misinformation based on visual content and provide solid alternative explanations for the visual content. She introduced the Missci model, an innovative theoretical argumentation model for fallacious reasoning.

Second ECAI in Santiago

Senén Barro, director of CiTIUS and president of the organizing committee, highlighted during the opening ceremony of ECAI 2024 that this is the second time Santiago de Compostela has hosted the European AI Conference, following a successful event in 2020, which was held exclusively online during the pandemic. 

Barro emphasized that this edition coincides with the 50th anniversary of the first AI conference, indicating that AI is not a recent field of research. He also expressed his gratitude to the members of the committee, the organizing team, and the sponsoring companies and organizations, while calling on governments to provide "decisive support for the development of AI" in our community.

Antonio López, rector of the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), thanked the event organizers for choosing Santiago, a city with a university boasting over 500 years of history that "faces the future by training and educating the professionals of tomorrow." He highlighted the master's degree in Artificial Intelligence and USC’s commitment to research in this field through centers such as CiTIUS and collaboration with organizations and institutions.

The Conselleiro of Education, Science, and Universities, Román Rodríguez, stressed that the Galician Government views AI development as a "strategic axis for economic and social development" and pointed out that the Xunta already has the Galician AI Strategy 2030, a "roadmap to position the region as an advanced area."

He stated that "technology advances with new challenges and opportunities, and it depends on us how we face them. Today, AI is no longer a distant promise, as it was 50 years ago, but a reality that has transformed society."

Ethics and Values

For her part, the Mayor of Santiago de Compostela, Goretti Sanmartín, stated that "AI is a powerful tool that, when used with ethics, values, and civility, can transform industries and improve people's lives." "From public administrations, we are clear that the use of this tool is an ethical issue. AI has the ability to amplify the best in us. That's why we must use it responsibly and wisely," she added.

The Government Delegate in Galicia, Pedro Blanco, affirmed that AI "presents an opportunity for the development of society, to continue advancing, progressing, and improving people's lives."

In this regard, he highlighted the Spanish Government's commitment to "ensuring that our country plays a key role" internationally in the development of this technology, with pioneering initiatives such as the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy and the launch of AESIA (Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence) in A Coruña.

The President of the Diputación de A Coruña, Valentín González Formoso, stated that "we are in a period of rapid and profound changes," and that technology not only affects industry but society as a whole. For this reason, he described ECAI 2024 as an important platform to "share knowledge, foster collaboration between different disciplines, and generate new ideas that drive responsible innovation."

Ignasi Belda, Director of the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence (AESIA), highlighted Spain and Galicia's "leading role" in the development of Artificial Intelligence and emphasized the importance of developing the ecosystem that supports innovation, companies, and development without leaving anyone behind. He also noted that AESIA is the first agency of its kind in Europe.

ECAI 2024 represents a record-breaking event, both in terms of the number of presentations, which exceed five hundred, and the number of attendees and the relevance of its content. Undoubtedly, all of this will make Santiago de Compostela the world capital of artificial intelligence during the week of October 19-24.