Unicamp's Institute for Advanced Studies (IdEA) began this Wednesday (20) the activities of the Study Group on Artificial Intelligence, bringing together ten experts from different areas and institutions to debate the advances and problems involving new technologies. Increasingly common in everyday life, artificial intelligence (AI) employs machines with some degree of autonomy based on algorithms or sequences of rules and operations that allow solving similar classes of problems.
There are many advantages to using AI-based tools, implemented in useful applications and products for society, such as autonomous vehicles, simultaneous translators, voice assistants on cell phones and GPS navigation software. The very way of doing science should be impacted by AI technologies. In fact, alongside their usefulness, there are many dilemmas, contradictions and challenges of an ethical, philosophical, political and scientific nature to be considered at the center of the debates of the new IdEA study group.
For electrical engineer Virgilio Almeida, professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and one of the members of the group, “AI is not something of the future, it is something that is immediately present in our environment”. “We are part of an ecosystem that surrounds us and is entirely based on these algorithms”, declared Almeida during a talk presented at the first meeting at IdEA. For the UFMG professor and also associate professor at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, Brazil is not paying enough attention to the issue and Unicamp's initiative is welcome.
Under the coordination of journalist specialized in data analysis Marcelo Soares, the study group also includes communications engineer Demi Getschko (Internet Steering Committee in Brazil), journalist Eugênio Bucci (ECA/USP), lawyer Francisco Brito Cruz (InternetLab), physicist Jacques Wainer (IC/Unicamp), demographer Luciana Alves (NEPO/Unicamp), journalist Magaly Prado (post-doc. ECA/USP), social scientist Rafael Evangelista (Labjor/Unicamp) and the physicist Victor Mammana (CTI Renato Archer). The inaugural meeting was also attended by the rector of Unicamp, Marcelo Knobel, the linguist and poet Carlos Vogt, president of the Scientific and Cultural Council of IdEA, the literary critic Alcir Pécora, coordinator of IdEA, and the physicist Anderson Fauth, deputy coordinator of the Idea.
According to Vogt, the proposal to create the GE was born during the Post-Truth Seminar, held in September 2018 by IdEA, in partnership with the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo. Among the tables at the symposium was one entitled “Who are the algorithms”, with talks by Marcelo Soares and Virgilio Almeida addressing how these technologies are influencing debates in contemporary society. “We invited Marcelo Soares to join the activities of IdEA, and one of them would be the organization and coordination of this Artificial Intelligence Study Group, which, certainly, is a topic that is not only current, but also compelling for several reasons”, said Vogt, former dean of Unicamp (1990-1994). The Artificial Intelligence GE meetings will be monthly and the results must be presented in a seminar and publication yet to be defined.
The coordinator of IdEA, Alcir Pécora, professor at the Institute of Language Studies (IEL) at Unicamp, highlighted that the organization sought to find experts in different areas of study and with different positions in relation to the topic to propose developments of a nature at the end of the discussions. speculative and intellectual. “We were very curious about trying to advance this discussion here to find out exactly what is behind these algorithms and what can be speculated about these elements. There are several possible developments,” said Pécora.
The GE coordinator, Marcelo Soares, proposed some topics about AI to be discussed in the next meetings, including: the social implications in work and Law; political impacts; health, identity and privacy; algorithms in the production and consumption of culture; who are the large companies that develop and control; and fictions and Singularity. “I was very honored by this invitation from IdEA to set up this group. At the same time that not all of us have practical, day-to-day experience of working with artificial intelligence, all of us here have questions, questions, readings and curiosities to bring about it. I believe the next few months will be very interesting.”
In 2018, IdEA created its first study group, the Education GE, which focused on the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) for Secondary Education, producing in the second semester a document with contributions from experts that was sent to the National Education Council (CNE). Also last year, IdEA had as the first guest of the Artist in Residence Program “Hilda Hilst” the filmmaker Ugo Giorgetti, who taught a course and showed his entire production in a film exhibition over 13 weeks. This year, in addition to the new GE, the Institute of Advanced Studies is expected to inaugurate the Resident Scientist Program, bringing renowned experts to develop activities at Unicamp.
