Manuela Battaglini is a lawyer and expert in digital marketing and communication. He has worked as a digital ethics advisor for governments and public administrations. He was one of the authors of the Spanish Charter of Digital Rights and director of the organization Transparent Internet. He is currently PhD in Artificial Intelligence at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
For Battaglini, the Internet is an iceberg divided into layers. All actions, political, legal, ethical and even economic, focus on the visible layer of the iceberg. According to this lawyer, “all the problems we are experiencing in the digital world have their origin in the icy sea of oligopolies and immovable monopolies.” Is it possible, then, for another model of governance? On this subject he will speak at the Euskarabildua days.
Battaglini has researched the effects of artificial intelligence on society and democracy, among other things, he has analyzed the ethical, social and legal influence of algorithms that underpin artificial intelligence and has worked on the design of a methodology of ethical and reliable design of automated decisions.
Artificial intelligence is based on algorithms, that is, the formal description of the steps to be taken to solve a problem. What humans are used to processing in our minds naturally is taught to machines to give automatic responses. Therefore, processing standards or algorithms directly affect these automatic responses. Who decides on those rules? On what criteria?
This reality is directly related to the idea of the iceberg to which Battaglin refers, since today it is in the hands of big companies that knowledge about the criteria that can condition the world.
What is Euskarabildua?
It is a news conference that aims to bring together Euskera and technology, a space for reflection and dissemination for innovative initiatives that want to influence society, and that offers the possibility of promoting the knowledge and technological innovation applicable in Basque society and in Euskera.
Iametza, Argia and Ametzagaiña jointly organise these conferences since 2012. This year will be held on October 17 at the San Telmo Museum from 09:00 in the morning.