Cristina Garcia Married | Salamanca (EFE).- The Royal Spanish Academy of Language (RAE) works with large technology companies so that Artificial Intelligence (AI) does not “injure” Spanish, nor does it cause a “loss of the great cultural value that is the language ”, and hopes to announce some initiative in this regard before the end of the year.
“The RAE has not remained impassive or quiet in the face of such challenges, it has done the necessary exercise: talk to those who manufacture the machines. We have met with each of the presidents and senior managers of the world’s great technology companies”, the director of the RAE, Santiago Muñoz Machado, revealed this Monday in Salamanca during his speech at the opening of the VII International Congress of Spanish in Castilla and Leon.
The Academy is working to make technology companies understand that “talking machines have to follow the canon of human speakers”, and that the opposite would mean “a great mess, a first-order cultural injury”.
“The reception of the companies has been very positive, some executives have come to Spain, we have met, we have asked them to use the materials produced by the RAE in the training of the machines”, added Muñoz.
“Before the end of this year,” he continued, “we will be able to make a big announcement of the progress we have made with all the technology companies or with each of them separately.”
Muñoz has defended that this is an “exciting” time and that AI “can facilitate the work that the RAE does”, for which reason the Academy is already working with funds requested from the Government in everything related to this technological development.
“Humans must always control machines and I don’t think there is any ruler or businessman stupid enough to break that rule,” he concluded.
Consider it an “occurrence” to call Spanish “ñamericano”
Before his presentation, the director of the RAE has dismissed the idea of the Argentine journalist and writer Martín Caparrós of calling Spanish “ñamericano” as an “occurrence”, a proposal that generated debate at the last International Congress of the Spanish Language, held this March in Cadiz.
In this sense, he has affirmed that “there is no debate” about the name of a language spoken by almost 500 million people in the world, the vast majority outside the country from which its name comes, Spain.
Asked about Caparrós’s proposal, the director of the RAE told EFE that the Argentine writer’s “was a very personal proposal” based on his book entitled “Ñamérica”, “an occurrence that is fine as an occurrence.”
“No one doubts that the language is called Spanish or Castilian, our Constitution says Castilian and in America Castilian or Spanish is used,” he said. EFE