*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
*Patria Colloquium to deepen on how dynamics of power are transformed in an interconnected world
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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.