“If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go accompanied; and if you want both, create a ecosystem”. Epic quote to remember that this meeting is one of the best ecosystems in the world and the 4 Years From Now (4YFN) 2023 is officially inaugurated. On stage, his ‘masterchefs’, says the host of the act: the president of the hall, Yossi Vardiand his director, pere duranboth delighted with the picture in front of them (a full room), confident in the future that holds for the entrepreneurs and to the ‘startups‘ despite the macroeconomic and geopolitical situation global, and with plans that this is only the prelude to a much larger edition next year. As Vardi confesses shortly before leaving the stage, the organization wants this lounge for startups associated to Mobile World Congress occupy two floors in 2024, double the space than this year.
This year, more than 700 companies (almost the same as the year before the covid) of all kinds of geographies and sectors and in very mixed situation. Despite the fact that the multiple Catalan delegations (Generalitat, Town Hall, Mobile World Capital, Barcelona Health Hub, University of Barcelona, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Pompeu Fabra University…) have a leading role in this space, the rest of the ‘stands’ that group companies confirm this variety: from Andalusia, Asturias and Valencia, until Japangoing by Austria, Francethe Netherlands, Britain and even Ukraine. “We have no other: we have to keep fighting, the soldiers on the battlefield and we in the technological area,” says one of the representatives of the ukrainian national investment fund that has selected the eight ‘startups’ participating in the show. Its objective, that people know the potential of entrepreneurs in Ukraine and that they continue to flow, despite everything, the projects and the investment.
“The most important thing about this edition is that after 2 very hard years due to the covid we can say without any doubt that the ecosystem of ‘startups’ is here in full,” Pere Durán analyzes in his inaugural speech, who takes the opportunity to point out the areas that he believes will be central throughout this week: the metaverse, the artificial intelligence and the sustainability.
Proof of this is his conference, which ends up becoming an injection of optimism for entrepreneurs (“The ecosystem is resilient enough to navigate everything that comes and I am very sure that startups will be at the forefront& rdquor; , launches this directive.”Winston Churchill He said that success is going from one failure to another without losing the desire & rdquor ;, completes Vardi), give way to another talk, the first official of this ninth edition of the 4YFNabout how the human is the future of technology. Or that the debate organized a while later by the association Tech Barcelona about him real impact of artificial intelligence amid so much expectation build up a queue at the entrance that almost doubles the capacity of the space that hosts it.
The potential of artificial intelligence
“Why are we worried? Because it directly affects us: in every revolution, technology has destroyed jobs and has challenged the definition of what it means to be human& rdquor;, reasons one of the speakers, the expert engineer in this technology, Josep Maria Ganyet. “We still don’t know what will happen, just as we didn’t know ten years ago what would happen to the phones waves social networks& rdquor ;, raises this specialist, who recalls that this latest invention was designed as a leisure tool to socialize and has ended up being one of the main sources of misinformation.
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At his side, however, three Spanish companies become an involuntary example of everything that can go well: factual because it uses artificial intelligence so that companies can make better sales forecasts and, after all, fine-tune their processes; mitigates because it has developed a tool to prevent natural disasters with this technology; accessible, because you can detect diseases with it.
In any case, all of them confirm that the future of this and many other technologies is human, who will have to work conscientiously to find a way for the artificial intelligence be the truly useful tool that it is called to be, without bias and with much more transparency when it comes to knowing how it does what it does.