When he chose his Computer Science Degree in the mid-1980s, he did not know that this decision was his first step towards occupying the ‘q’ seat at the Royal Spanish Language Academy (RAE). And when he received his PhD in Artificial Intelligence, nothing predicted that he would enter this profile a few years later, at that institution that has forged the unity of language in the Hispanic globe for more than 300 years. Asunción Gómez-Pérez (Azuaga, 1967) remembers being surprised (and stunned) when academic Pedro García Barreno informed him that Gregorio Salvador would propose his name to fill the void left by his death. “He called me and I thought RAE wanted to entrust me with a project,” she says. And everything, because while this Artificial Intelligence professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid is still studying the Baccalaureate at the San José de Villafranca de los Barros school, one of his cousins has offered a fairly new career in the exact sciences. “I was going to study math, and he said to me: Look at the Computer Science degree. That’s where the future is going,” he recalls on the phone.
-Did you have time to see yourself as an academic of RAE?
–Well, the first thing I have to do is write my introductory speech as soon as possible to become a full scholar. I am currently only an elected academic.
– Have you already thought about what you will talk about in the conversation?
-It will be about the symbiosis between artificial intelligence and language. The Royal Spanish Language Academy has signed an agreement with the Ministry of Economic Affairs for the Spanish Language and Artificial Intelligence (LEIA) project to improve the use of Spanish in areas where artificial intelligence is being developed. It is a EUR 1100 million PERTE that aims to create an industry around the language economy with different actors, including companies and academia itself. This is my profile and I’m also thinking of helping here for the successful conclusion of this project.
-What is this symbiosis between language and artificial intelligence?
On the one hand, artificial intelligence applications are capable of analyzing written texts, creating written texts, extracting information from these texts or reasoning with information stored or extracted from texts. On the other hand, there is also how the Academy will make it easier for texts produced by artificial intelligence systems or others to comply with grammatical rules with all the resources it has.
-And this is the area where he works and researches…
– My specialty is ontologies, computational models that use words to describe the knowledge of a field so that the computer can, for example, describe and understand a written text. I make ontologies, these ontologies have words, and these words are written not in the language we understand, but in a language that is logic and consists of the computational models I’ve been talking about. With them we can analyze a written text to extract all the information or data of the contexts represented.
-Which app has or might have all of this?
-Example: We have property sales deeds. They have a buyer, a seller, an object being sold, and a price. Well, it’s possible to make a computer model to represent sales titles and then have thousands of different titles in the system and extract the information to find out a buyer, a seller, how much the property has been sold for. .. What we do with ontologies is to design this model so that the computer can extract data about us from a text.
-And the role that RAE has followed in this process is that Spanish is more present and better positioned in this language of calculation?
-More computationally advanced languages at the moment are English and Chinese. Hence the new PERTE of the new language economy.
What succeeded in sparking your interest in computing in Azuaga in the ’80s?
–I really enjoyed math. My family comes from the field of health and I went to that branch at the institute to study Pharmacy. But in the COU year I decided to change the department to study Mathematics because even though I got good grades, I liked them more than chemistry. And then they told me about some recent work that seems to have a more professional future, with an important foundation in mathematics.
-Who suggested it?
-One of my cousins is studying Exact Sciences in Computer Science in Madrid. He told me: “The future lies in computing. If you have a note, go to the Computer section». We are talking about the year 1985, when information technology was not as developed as it is now and did not penetrate the daily life of citizens, companies and government that much.
It permeates everything today.
Technology is following us, and we are following it. We cannot live without it right now.
– He couldn’t have imagined that this road would apparently take him as far as the RAE.
-Completely. But yes, I loved artificial intelligence from the early years of my career. It was clear to me, when I was in my third year, I entered the Artificial Intelligence lab, I also did a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, and then I went to the USA, went to Stanford University, where I learned a lot. Tom Gruber’s computational ontologies were invented by the researcher himself. When I returned to Madrid, I found that ontologies have an important relationship with language because the models we represent in the computer are models that use words.
-But they didn’t use them in Spanish…
-Because in the 90s and the first years of this century, we always made ontologies in English. Look, when I approached the industry to present our work at a particular moment, they asked us for Spanish jobs. And for those of us who are researchers, this causes us to ask ourselves a question: What do I need to do to translate all this terminology from English to Spanish? Thus, I began to lead a research series dealing with the automatic translation of ontologies from English to Spanish. We gradually added other languages until we started talking about multilingual ontologies.
-How are you with social networks? They also permeate everything.
I’m trying to use it in a professional environment, but I usually use it for reading rather than writing. The time spent entering information on social media or reading content posted by others can be as little or as much as you want. The key should be to choose, because there is content produced by humans and others by machines. You have to criticize what you find and be very aware of what is posted.
-Social networks also seem to negatively affect language use.
-When you have limited characters or write a message with autocomplete functionality, you will get carried away and this can lead to bias. If we unthinkingly accept the word suggested by the application, we restrict our vocabulary. If a word is misspelled many times, the app will suggest that word even more with that misspelling; because the more we use it, the more we strengthen the app that way, even if it’s wrong, that’s the way we want to use it. And finally, it’s true that spelling and grammar are neglected in some areas. Therefore, one of the goals of the LEIA project is to promote the correct use of Spanish when communicating through all digital media.
-Is it because we loosened the rules and correct use of language?
-Yes, but I think it’s all about the need to experience that accelerated present that we write in several WhatsApp groups at once.
-Requests came to RAE several times to advance in an inclusive language, do you consider it necessary?
Inclusive language is important, but should not be cumbersome. As long as a balance is maintained, it’s very reasonable.
12 women were among the 486 academics in RAE’s 300-year history. There is a long way to go for the pair.
Academics who propose new members should respond to this. I hope that in my appointment they took into account not only the fact of being a woman, but also my virtues or capacity.
-How were you left when you found out that your name was offered?
-That was the big surprise. When I got the phone and spoke to Pedro García Barreno, I thought the academy wanted to give me a project, as I’ve been working on language and artificial intelligence projects for a long time. But then he said to me, “I want to propose your candidacy.” Something I did not expect and at the same time a great happiness. I am very honored that those who proposed my candidacy thought of me.
-Who will be your reference in RAE?
-The Pedro García Barreno I know best right now. And frankly, may Margarita Salas rest in peace for being herself.
– What are you reading?
– During the week, first of all, I read a lot of work papers and in my spare time I usually read a lot about technology.
– How do you disconnect?
– With family, friends and a walk in the countryside. in nature.
-You left Extremadura not to come back?
-To return when possible. I return to Azuaga every two or three weeks and spend all my holidays there. I am one of the Extremadurans who continues to maintain the network of friends I have; In Zafra, Azuaga, Peñalsordo and Villafranca de los Barros.
Source: Informacion
