It was on the 11th of December that the debate “Personal Data and Artificial Intelligence: New Frontier” took place, an initiative of PSE and SIC / Expresso.
During the event, several current issues were discussed. Namely the importance of personal data for companies, how artificial intelligence can help organizations and the relevance of privacy and transparency in the treatment of personal data.
According to José Manuel Paraíso, President of IBM Portugal, “data has always been important for companies”. Nuno Santos, Chief Analytics & Strategy Officer at PSE, clarifies that “the difficulty for organizations is not having data, but knowing how to capitalize on it. Take raw data and turn it into something that constitutes value ”.
The data add value to the business, as they are the “basis for making decisions based on facts” says Nuno Maximiano, Analytics Portfolio and Cognitive Solutions Sales at IBM Portugal.
Luís Fonseca, Economic Security Coordinator and Data Protection Officer (DPO) at Auchan Retail adds that one of the great advantages of data is that it allows companies to “Meet customers and adjust the service to improve their shopping experience, offering products according to your preferences ”. Because an “optimal solution for a customer, does not serve another distinct customer”, as stated by Pedro António, Chief Future Officer at Grupo Ageas Portugal.
There are several technological tools that allow us to get to know our customer better through the use and treatment of personal data. “Anyone who can handle data better, can serve people better and has a huge competitive advantage over others.” says José Manuel Paraíso.
The Artificial Intelligence tools allow the definition of “A model or sets of models that, in some way, will produce results in an automated way”. These tools “have more capacity than humans to identify patterns, identify trends and have much more speed of execution than a human” says Nuno Maximiano.
How should we treat personal data? Is data privacy a recent issue or did companies already take this into account? It is crucial that people feel that their data is protected, know what companies are going to use it for and, above all, have the right to complete control of their information.
Luís Fonseca says that “the data protection law already existed before the GDPR”, with many companies already taking into account the protection and privacy of customer data. However, the “legislation came to help”. Luís Fonseca, adds that “companies should use data only for the purposes collected and informed to the client”.
Pedro Lomba, Partner and Co-coordinator of the technology, mobility and communications area at PLMJ states that “The GDPR has already taken a relevant step. But, of course, it was a first step because in terms of the governance of the data processed, obtained, generated, inferred or extracted by Artificial Intelligence models, we will have major developments ”.
Pedro António emphasized the importance of consent, transparency and security of personal data – “protecting data, to protect citizens at the end of the day”
Review the debate HERE.
Watch the speaker interviews HERE.
