Barcelona has 'extraordinary opportunity' with AI, says EU official

Daniel Calleja, director of the European Commission's (EC) Representation in Spain, believes that Barcelona "has an extraordinary opportunity" with artificial intelligence (AI). 

"Barcelona has a number of assets that could be very useful for providing more competitiveness and making it easier for companies to access [AI]," he said in statements to the Catalan News Agency (ACN).

Amid the debate over the advancement of AI, the senior European official says that  "there is no need to be afraid" and argues that "laboratory solutions should be transferred to the real economy."

Meanwhile, Christian Canton, associate director of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), agrees, saying that the Catalan capital is "very well positioned within the European AI ecosystem." 

Calleja and Canton met this Tuesday at a conference on AI at Foment del Treball, the 'Forward Tech Summit,' where they discussed how this technology can be used to improve companies'  competitiveness.

Gap between SMEs and large companies using AI

According to Calleja, there is a gap between SMEs and large companies when it comes to using AI. Specifically, he places the use among small and medium-sized companies at 19%, compared to 57% in large companies – three times as much.

He believes that "literacy" is needed so that SMEs, which make up the majority of Catalonia's business fabric, are "better trained in everything that AI implies." 

Calleja, who has been involved in EU policies for over 30 years, says AI can bring "much more productivity and competitiveness" and it must continue to be developed because it will make business "more efficient."

"There is no need to be afraid," he says. "AI is an opportunity, it is a technology that is transforming our lives."

Barcelona, ​​a European AI hub

Canton also says that Barcelona is one of the "hotspots" of AI in Europe, but believes that it is necessary to "talk more about the successes" that exist, both in Catalonia and in Spain, to encourage more companies to adopt the technology. 

"We need to talk more about it, we need to delve deeper so that everyone is aware of the effort that is being made," Canton said, who worked in the United States for several years. 

"A lot of the time, public money has been invested in making AI models, therefore, it is really money that is being returned to society," he said, citing open-source projects developed at the BSC such as AINA or ALIA.

"The world of AI is evolving at an extreme speed," he said. That's why he's committed to "regulating faster" and making it clear to companies "where the red lines are, what can be done and what can't be done, before there's an incident."

"It's a hot topic right now, and it's a topic that we have to put all our efforts into," he said, days after Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei called for AI development to be slowed down.

"You have to grow in an orderly, conscious way, and not just try anything that works and then fix it afterwards," he said. "It's better to do it right the first time and not have to correct it later."