Cuba, IV Edition of Patria Colloquium kicks off in Havana

teleSUR English

*Nearly 400 guests from 48 countries are participating in the IV Patria Colloquium *Patria Colloquium to deepen on how dynamics of power are transformed in an interconnected world

Transcript

00:00The Patria International Colloquium kicked off in Havana, Cuba, an event that brings

00:21together in the Cuban capital nearly 400 guests from Cuba and 47 countries who will pay a

00:28special homage to the 20th anniversary of the multiplatform Telesur. With the laying of a

00:33wrath to the Julio Antonio Meya monument by the hands of the president of the multiplatform

00:38Telesur, Patricia Villegas, the fourth edition started at the University of Havana, the main

00:44venue of this event. Under the premise, we are people's waving networks, the event will be held

00:49from March 17th to March 19th, aiming to explore how power is transformed in an interconnected

00:56world. Until Wednesday, attendees will participate in conferences, panels and workshops to discuss

01:03the unprecedented possibilities of social interaction in a context marked by the rise of

01:08misinformation. And in this context, let's contact our correspondent in Havana, Cuba, Belen de los

01:15Santos, who is there with all the latest information on this event. Hi Bel, what can you share with us

01:20at this hour? Hello Alejandra and we continue here at the University of Havana, the fourth

01:30edition of the Patria Colloquium and we have been telling you throughout this first day of this

01:36colloquium that is dedicated to thinking really the challenges and also the new strategies for

01:42the years to come, to thinking strategic in communication dedicated to and thought from

01:50the global south, the global south and the leftist side of the global south coming together

01:55to really think a new strategy regarding not only the digital platforms, the possibility of

02:02building new platforms, of thinking about what is the strategic plan regarding artificial

02:08intelligence, one of the main topics that is on the really the discussion table right now, not

02:15only here the colloquium but really worldwide because it is one of the things that everyone

02:20points to going to change the years to come and of course this affects particularly the world

02:27of communication and to go deeper into this and bring perspectives from all over the world as we

02:33have been doing throughout the day. We are joined now by Javier Blanco, he comes from Argentina, he

02:39is a professor at the National University of Cordoba and also director of a master's program

02:46in technology, politics and culture. So first of all Javier, thank you so much for joining us here

02:52in Tell Us Your English, it's a pleasure to have you and I would like to ask you first why is it

02:57so important for you to come from Argentina here to Cuba to discuss these topics with comrades and

03:04media outlets from all over the world, what is really happening here today at the Patria Colloquium?

03:10I think that as you have we're saying we are in a big transformation for all the

03:15milieu for communication and politics, actually I conducted a workshop called

03:22Political Challenges of AI for the Global South and the idea is that try to

03:28understand this new milieu and it's very important to do it here from more than 50 countries who are

03:34coming to join this colloquium for the fourth time in a row and I think that we have to

03:40understand how the transformation of the technological mediations is really changing the

03:48politics, most of all in the production of subjectivity, how subjects, political subjects

03:54are created is now really affected by the new technologies that we really need to understand

04:00and more than that to produce our own tools, it's not only to inhabit the world of social networks

04:08but also to create new tools and new networks that really have other principles of functioning

04:13and other values inscribed in its functioning. So I wanted to ask you maybe

04:21for the everyday women and men the possibility of creating our own technology in terms of

04:28artificial intelligence from countries in Latin America, from countries in the Global South

04:33seems like something very far away or something that is only possible for big nations in the North,

04:40is that really true? Do we have experiences that we can rely on? How close are we to thinking of

04:47our own artificial intelligence developed in the Global South and for a leftist perspective?

04:52I mean, first of all, artificial intelligence is just one ripple on the big sea of

04:59computational mediation, so now it's a very, I don't know, fashionable word but somehow

05:05technology is much more, much wider than that and we have a lot of experience doing technology.

05:10Artificial intelligence, what is now called artificial intelligence, actually machine

05:14learning, is a kind of technology that is very easily appropriated by the big corporations

05:21and this is the problem. But this really has a short history, like, I don't know, 20 years at

05:27the most and probably it doesn't have a really long future like that. I mean, and now, for example,

05:34the DeepSeq developed by the Chinese shows that you can develop the same kind of tools, big

05:39language models, the same kind of tools with really much less money than the big companies

05:45of Silicon Valley. I mean that it is completely possible to join, not the competition but

05:51actually to produce the tools that we need. And I think that for a very short period

05:57they will have the initiative but we can't really catch up and have a real agenda for

06:03our countries to have our own networks and our own tools. This is completely possible. I try to

06:08convince all the companies here that we can do that. Excellent and definitely one of the

06:15conversations that are being had here at the Patriarch Colloquium has to do with that, with

06:20discussing that possibility and really thinking about how that could be done and not by just one

06:27partner but by the collectivity of all the experiences that are gathering here in Cuba

06:33today. So I wanted to ask you just before we end, you come from Argentina. Argentina is having

06:40a very significant experience right now. We are coming from one week that had a terrible

06:47repression. We have been following Intellisr, the latest on Mille's government and its neoliberal

06:54measures and how that is affecting the people and the journalism in that context is having really

07:01paying a very high toll. So I wanted to ask you from this perspective here that we are discussing

07:08the possibilities of digital platform, digital communications, building our own platforms to

07:14denounce, to show the real, the truth of what is happening to our peoples. What do these platforms,

07:20what can they do, what is their role in this scenario as complicated as it is for example

07:25in Argentina? Yes, in Argentina we are living a nightmare. It's really a political nightmare

07:30and I think the only way out of this is to be able to create our own utopia for the future

07:38and I mean now I think that the alt-rights, that is what we can say to identify Argentina's

07:45government currently, they can live quite easily into these kind of networks with the trolls,

07:53the kind of bots that produce a kind of new way of speech that is really irrational. It's not

08:01only rational, it's appealing or the worst feeling of people and this is working in Argentina. It's

08:06kind of a laboratory for the dystopian future. We have to oppose that with our own utopias and

08:13try to, in the left in Argentina or the whole popular field of politics, we need to create

08:22our own political horizon, technological horizon that we have to challenge this idea that this

08:30way of doing politics is the only way and the only ones that could think about the future

08:37is the techno capital or the big corporations. I think we can do that and we have to do it

08:43quite fast otherwise we will have any country to live in. We definitely think that

08:51that will be the case, that we can build these networks and also do that fight both in the digital

08:57and the physical territory. So thank you so much Javier for joining us here in Tell Us Your English.

09:02So Alejandra, we were with Javier Blanco from the National University of Cordoba in Argentina

09:08and these are some of the discussions that are underway right now. As we were saying, key topics

09:15of debate to think about the reality today that has to do with the world of communication

09:22in digital platforms but also for the left around the world to think a strategic plan for the years

09:29to come, a collective plan that gathers the experiences from Latin America, from Africa,

09:35from other parts of the world and really bring all of those experiences together to think a strategic

09:41plan for the years to come. This is all for now but we will continue to bring you all the

09:46information from the Padre Colloquium that is underway until Wednesday. I go back to you Ale.

09:52Thank you, thank you Helen and thanks to Javier Blanco for all the information. We will keep in

09:57contact for sure throughout the upcoming hours and days to know all the details of this event.

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