The director of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and president of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (Asale), Santiago Muñoz Machado, called for taking care of the development of artificial intelligence (AI) so that machines speak Spanish in the most correct way possible and at the same time prevent their algorithms from creating digital dialects that would constitute “a great break for the unity of the language”.

“It is important that machines, which are a growing number of non-human individuals who use our language, do so in the best possible way,” Muñoz Machado said in an interview with EFE during the celebration in Quito of the XVII Congress of the Asale, in which issues such as the challenges and opportunities of Spanish in the face of new technologies and the digital world will be discussed.

The Spanish jurist considered that for this there is “a competitive advantage: none of the technology companies that have machines that speak is interested in speaking badly, in the same way that no school or university is interested in having students who do not handle the language well.”

“Large technology companies are not interested in having illiterate people. To help them not have them, what we tell them is that, when they teach the machines to speak Spanish, they use the tools of the language academies, and in that way the machines will speak a language just like that of humans,” explained Muñoz Machado.

Spanish and AI

The director of the RAE admitted that, for the moment, they have not detected major deviations in artificial intelligence, with respect to the canon that the academies establish.

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“(But) we must take care of this and that it remains so, because it would be feasible for the algorithms that handle artificial intelligence to determine variations of the language that would ultimately create digital dialects of artificial intelligence, not unintelligible from the common Spanish language,” warned Muñoz Machado.

“That would be a great breakdown of the unity of the language and an unbearable injury to a language that they speak now and with which 600 million people understand. It would be very serious if it happened, but I think there is no will or interest in it happening, not even economically,” he concluded.

In that sense, he emphasized that the scenario that these machines could create languages derived from Spanish, as well as other languages, that only they understood is not science fiction, because “everything that comes out in this matter is happening now.”

AI to detect new words

The jurist, who has directed the RAE since 2018, recalled that in the previous Asale congress, held in 2019 in Seville (Spain), the Spanish Language and Artificial Intelligence (LEIA) project was already created.

“In recent years we have had great revolutions that can affect the tools we use for the general regulation of the language, especially the digital revolution and artificial intelligence. We have opened up to them immediately,” he said.

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Thus, they have also seen with AI an opportunity to use this technology to detect new terms and forms of expression that arise and that do not reach them through traditional channels.

The digital revolution has also led to the appearance of new words to name elements or phenomena that did not exist before, most Anglo-Saxon terms that do not generate fear in the academies of the Spanish language.

A mixed language

“It is not a great tragedy because Spanish has always been mestizo, a language very given to incorporating terms from other languages from its origins. He already incorporated many Arabic words and other neighboring languages. And in countries like the Americans it has terms of their original languages,” Muñoz Machado said.

“We’re not too worried. The ‘Dictionary of the Spanish Language’ has 94,000 entries and 189,000 meanings. Every year we incorporate a maximum of a dozen new terms from English, and we also incorporate them raw, without Castilianizing or Spanishizing them, in the same way they mean in English. We enrich the language in that way and nothing happens,” he added.

However, the director of the RAE emphasized that “a different thing is to use English expressions that have equivalent in Spanish only for snobbery or to show a certain knowledge of that culture in an unnecessary and harmful way for the quality and integrity of our language”

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At the Asale congress, among other novelties, a ‘Pan-Hispanic Guide to Clear Language’ will also be presented, with the aim that the official communications of the institutions can be understood by any citizen and that they can thus exercise “the right to understand,” as Muñoz Machado defined it, “which is the basis of the exercise of other rights.”

Ukraine has found in technology its best ally for war, with a commitment to innovation that makes the difference both on the battlefield and in the daily lives of millions of citizens who have to live with the invasion.

In a conflict that from the beginning has been compared to a fight between David and Goliath, the “slingshot” of Ukraine is technology: hybrids between a missile and a drone to accurately attack Russian bases, robots that evacuate wounded soldiers or kamikaze devices that destroy bridges.

Machines to support troops

“We are trying to fight them with machines because we do not have enough people,” explained the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation, Alex Bornyakov, in an interview with EFE during the Web Summit, the technology congress held this week in Lisbon.

This commitment to technological innovation allowed Ukraine to destroy part of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea with small kamikaze ships, an “exact example” of the metaphor between David and Goliath, the deputy minister said.

Ukrainian forces also use sentinel drones to monitor a territory, capable of attacking the enemy if necessary; robots that help evacuate soldiers so as not to endanger other companions; and autonomous devices to locate and extract mines.

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This year the biggest bet is drone missiles, such as the Palianytsia, with a flight range of between 500 and 700 kilometers and which can be used against targets in Russian territory.

“By next year we are definitely going to produce more of our own missiles,” explained Bornyakov, who explained that the budget for the purchase of drones is around 3,000 or 4 billion dollars.

In addition, they will allocate another 80 million to innovations in Defense.

Technology for day to day

These efforts are not only aimed at the battlefield but also at using technology to help Ukrainians live with the war on a daily basis.

An example is ‘Kiev Digital’, the mobile application that the City Council of the Ukrainian capital launched in 2021 and that since the invasion has become indispensable for the Kievites.

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“We notify people that a missile attack is coming. We offer you additional information about where the bomb shelters are, where the target of the attack is, which shelters have Wi-Fi and how to get there,” Oleg Polovynko, who advises the consistory on digitization issues, exemplified to EFE.

The app reports on other consequences of the war such as power cuts but also on the basic services of any city, such as the transport network or online procedures.

18% of the population uses it daily and about 40% weekly, said Polovynko, who assured that Kiev is already a global reference in digital transformation and “all cities have to learn” from it.

Objective: to boost the technological ecosystem

The Ukrainian technological ecosystem is present this year at the Web Summit with more than 80 start-ups, some of them oriented to the Defense sector, such as BeesAM and RMachine, specialized in mines.

Others, such as Inheart.memorial, are dedicated to helping to remember and honor the deceased, with a platform to make digital memorials that allows you to gather biographies, photographs, videos, links to social networks and other resources.

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Then a QR is created that is placed next to the tombstones, so that anyone can know their story.

Although the idea emerged before the war, it now includes many pages dedicated to the “heroes,” the CEO of the platform, Oleksander Sydorov, explained to EFE, who pointed out that they have added new features such as the last battle or the medals received.

Promoting the technological ecosystem was already one of the purposes of the Ukrainian Government in 2019, before the invasion, as the deputy minister recalled: “We set ourselves the goal of becoming one of the leading technological hubs in Europe.” The war has accelerated the process.

The president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, will officially announce on Friday the nomination of the governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, as the next Secretary of the Interior.

This was announced on Thursday night during the speech he offered at the gala dinner held at his private club in Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach (Florida), which from today until Saturday hosts a new edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

“We are going to reduce regulatory waste, fraud and inefficiency,” promised the Republican, winner of the electoral fair on November 5 and who will assume his second term on January 20.

Burgum: another one that Trump left in the race

Billionaire and former executive director of a technology company, Burgum ran in the primaries for the nomination of the Republican Party and even participated in the first two debates, finally abandoned the race to the White House last December.

Shortly after, Bergum, 68 years old and governor of North Dakota since 2016, gave his support to the former president (2017-2021) in the race for the Republican nomination and campaigned with him in several events.

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His name was even on the final list of the Republican’s possible presidential running mates, who finally opted for Ohio Senator JD Vance.

The ‘gala’ of the CPAC

The president-elect has today been the leading figure of the gala dinner of the conservative America First Policy Institute that is held in his mansion and social club, and in which he has been presented by actor Sylvester Stallone, who referred to the Republican as “the second George Washington.”

JD Vance, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, and billionaire Elon Musk, who is having a prominent participation in the transition process of the future Trump Administration, have been part of the gala.

“He’s good. He has done a fantastic job. Really an incredible mind,” Trump said at dinner.

The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, also participated in the event, who on the podium was “grateful” and “blessed” to be among “true giants.”

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“You have done a fantastic job in a short time and it is an honor to have you here,” Trump said, who stressed that the libertarian “has made Argentina great again,” alluding to the slogan of his campaign since 2016.

The US president-elect announced today another outstanding nomination: that of former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., known for his conspiracy theories about vaccines, as the new Secretary of Health.