The hype over ubiquitous artificial intelligence brings a smile to the tech industry

It’s been a while since the pavilions of the Fira de Barcelona seemed so crowded, the stands didn’t bring so much interest and the queues didn’t seem so eternal. Mobile World Congress 2024 brings back the old sensationsnot only because of the 95,000 attendees that quantifies them (a figure very similar to the pre-pandemic data), but also because of what is commented and rumored in the biggest tech event on the Old Continent and a of the largest in the world.

It was an all-or-nothing edition, as the fair suffered a definite downturn in the years following Covid-19. Many consumer manufacturers refused to make their big announcements at this event, and many business technology providers focused on their own events that sidelined this international convention. The era of big announcements, of embargoes that make your fingers tremble when you publish, is long gone.

That is why this MWC 2024 was so crucial: it had to return the lost luster to this event, to attribute to it an uncertain added value in a context of accelerated and continuous innovation, where Outages don’t wait on the calendar and happen in an unusual way. The truth is that, at least on the first day of the fair, we can confirm that this mission was successfully accomplished: the presence of Brad Smith -president of Microsoft, Michael Dell -from the company with the same name- and Antonio Neri (Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s top honchos, hyping the acquisition of Juniper Networks) provided the necessary backdrop of big names justifying a trip to the Barcelona capital.

(AI, AI and more AI: the generative aspect of this technology will be the main protagonist of Mobile World Congress 2024)

To the notable adjectives we had to add some trends that brought back interest in the tech ecosystem. Satisfied objective too, since open gate -in terms of network infrastructures- and artificial intelligence -in the purely digital one- achieve that effect hype who took many courses that we did not experience in the industry. Of course, once that expectation is created, it’s time to base it on real use cases, something this Mobile World Congress has barely scratched the surface of.

So much so that, already on the eve of MWC 2024, the president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, announced the creation of “an artificial intelligence language model specially trained in Spanish and the rest of the co-official languages”, which will be open-sourced. For this, The government will cooperate with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), the Spanish supercomputer network, the Royal Spanish Language Academy (RAE) and the Association of Spanish Language Academies. In addition, the president has invited the Ibero-American countries to join the initiative.

Actually, nothing new on the horizon, as all those projects (like Leia or Maria) were already underway. within the PERTE of the Language. Perhaps the elimination of the Commissioner from this plan, led by Cristina Gallach, has something to do with this fame and polish given to these initiatives. There was nothing new in Commissioner Breton’s intervention eitherwhich has positioned itself on the side of the ‘telcos’ in the debate over the so-called ‘Google tax’ in order for the big tech companies to financially compensate the telecommunications operators. A common claim in the speech of the executive president of Telefónica, Álvarez-Palletewho did not miss the opportunity to insist on this matter.

Yes, Minister José Luis Escrivá was an innovator, who has little or nothing left of the haughty low profile he displayed in his early weeks at the helm of the Digital Transformation portfolio. In just ten minutes and three slides, Escrivá has made a difference in the execution of some of the most emblematic initiatives of the previous executive (such as the Next Tech funds, PERTE Chip or the Spain Audiovisual Hub fund) as well as ‘stolen’ state intervention in Telefónica for its command and control. All this with the creation of a new public business entity, SETT, a kind of ‘digital SEPI’ with 20,000 million euros to be executed, most of them from Europe.

Within the walls of Fira de Barcelona we have also found space for innovation that goes beyond the artificial intelligence boom. This is the case, for example, of the Eurecat technology center, which is being shown at MWC 2024 Assistive robots for people who have suffered a stroke or pregnancy and postpartum monitoring applications. The same thing happens with satellite Earth observation technologies sustainable on-site management or efficient wastewater treatment.

Companies like Red Hat have put special emphasis on it advancing Industry 4.0 through 5G and WiFi 6 connectivity (waiting for the 5.5G that Huawei already anticipates to arrive), as well as the evolution of cloud native architectures for the telco sector. We have also seen ambulances connected in real time for optimal emergency managementsmart vehicles (although to a lesser extent than other years in which MWC looked like a motor show) and numerous proposals related to the cloud, data management or virtualization of networks and IT environments.

Artificial intelligence everywhere

This edition of the MWC, in addition, is the first to be held after the agreement of the community authorities to the next bill that will regulate the use of artificial intelligence in Europe. So, We are seeing at the fair new use cases promoted by various companies focused on exploiting the potential of this technologybut also debates and reflections on risks and their implementation in an ethical and responsible manner.

(MWC 2023 mobilizes more than 40 million euros in investments for startups through 4YFN)

Moreover, this 2024 will be fulfilled ten years since it was created 4 years from nowthe space dedicated to entrepreneurship and startups that has its own space within the Mobile World Congress. This call, which already has its subject, has been growing in importance and space throughout its editions and in fact this year’s call promises to be the biggest in its history.

Also in this case, the technological trends of 4YFN match those of the Mobile World Congress in general, with particular importance, once again, of Generative artificial intelligence, its possibilities and implications. Also, there will be a debate about how to generate, attract and retain talent, one of the big problems affecting industry and other fields like quantum computing.

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