By Sarai Coscojuela
Caracas (EFE).- Venezuela takes the first steps to introduce itself in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), in which, according to experts, elements such as the economic crisis, the precariousness of public services and economic sanctions play a role against its development.
Recently, the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, introduced Sira, a “stellar presenter” created with AI that is part of his new television program “Con Maduro +”, in which he promised “many surprises” with this discipline.
In addition, the Vice Minister for the Development of Information and Communication Technologies of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Gloria Carvalho, stated on April 20 that the country is at the “vanguard in AI research and development.” .
“The AI must be trained, it knows more because of the information it has accumulated than because it is intelligent. From Venezuela we are making great efforts to digitize our information”, indicated Carvalho.
Likewise, he said that the case of Sira is the product of the collection of “a lot of information”, to which a tool was added to know how to answer certain questions, by having a history of information programmed on how a group of people responds to similar questions. .
AI in Venezuela, incipient
Despite these announcements, the digital security trainer of the Venezuelan NGO Redes Ayuda, David Aragort, explained to EFE that Venezuela is still “far behind” in the development of AI, influenced by the economic crisis and economic sanctions.
“If we start talking about development, we are still far behind, and the issue of sanctions also has a bit of an influence on that. I am not saying it as something bad, but something that has limited, until now, the development of these technologies for the people who live within the country, ”he indicated.
He pointed out that the ChatGPT system cannot be used from Venezuela and users cannot register with a phone number from the country, although, he said, these are restrictions that can be evaded.
Another element to consider are the failures in public services such as electricity and the internet, which for Aragort, are more stable in Caracas, but in other regions it is more palpable due to which the dominant media are radio and television, with which who believes that the impact of AI, for now, will be limited.
“If we are talking about the world that already has access to the internet, I would say that even at that level the impact that AI is going to have is still limited, at least for now, until it starts as a maturation process in which we go to realize what are the advantages that using these tools gives us for the work that we already do”, he pointed out.
Benefits and risks in the country
In his opinion, over time AI tools will be adapted in more and more fields, especially in politics, to obtain some kind of revenue, in addition to positioning narratives on social networks.
Regarding this, the director of the Venezuelan NGO ProBox, Mariví Marín, told EFE that in Venezuela there is a gap in access to technology that suggests that the use of the Internet is a privilege and not a right.
“Somehow, access to the internet is understood more as a privilege than as a right and, furthermore, when you have a country in a humanitarian emergency (…) things like (what) happens on social networks, how it is manipulated or not It seems very far away for the majority of the population”, he added.
Marín added that AI has many benefits in areas such as health and academia but, in the Venezuelan context, it can be diverted to the imposition of narratives, ideological propaganda and “attacks on opposition leaders.”
“In the Venezuelan case, we have seen how the Synthesia software has been optimized to create alleged US news (…) to then promote a version of a Venezuela that does not exist,” he said.
Marín said that from now on the use of AI by the Government will be seen more with narratives that target the internal audience, in view of the elections, and also the external one in order to reestablish relations, new investments and the return of migration and the productive capacity of the country.