The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Guibert Englebienne (Globant): "Suppose we pause artificial intelligence, will China?"

2023-05-30T10:53:16.226Z

Highlights: Argentine Guibert Englebienne is the co-founder of technology company Globant. The company was born in Argentina 20 years ago and is now worth over 7,100 million euros. He says the best recipe for progress has been to embrace change. But he warns that there is a gap between what is talked about and what is actually done in the real world, and AI is not the answer to all problems in the tech industry. He also says that governments should not regulate AI, as they know very little about it.


The co-founder of the technology calls to "embrace change" and does not believe that artificial intelligence should be synonymous with layoffs


There are cookies and potato omelette to snack on, a table football that no one is playing, motivational messages in English hanging on the wall, and dozens of employees, mostly young, divided between those who chat in brightly colored meeting rooms and those who do it in front of the computer screen with headphones on. If a clueless visitor were to enter the room and connect the dots, he could deduce that he is at the headquarters of a technology company. It is called Globant, was born in Argentina 20 years ago, has more than 27,000 workers and offices in Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga or Logroño, although most of its business comes from the United States. This Friday it was worth just over 7,100 million euros on the stock market, a few hundred million more than a few days ago, because it has just published results and the increase in quarterly income has pleased the market.

One of its founders, the Argentine Guibert Englebienne, 56 years old from Mar del Plata and Belgian name for his Walloon father, is passing through the company's headquarters, on the 17th floor of the Torre Europa building, in the financial center of the capital of Spain. He cites three milestones for the growth of the firm – "big bangs", he calls them – since it was conceived in a bar in Buenos Aires to the multinational software and digital consultancy that it is today: the agreement with Google in 2006 to help it develop software, the alliance with Disney in 2009 to reinvent the experience in its parks, and the leap to artificial intelligence (AI) eight years ago, long before ChatGPT made headlines and encouraged all sorts of predictions and dystopias.

Question. How do they use artificial intelligence?

Answer. Our humanity is amplified by AI. A lot of our tasks are done by relying on it, from how we recruit, how we build teams or how we generate a company with a stronger culture. But it's also at the heart of our business, which is software development: we program, test, and understand code faster. Globant is a hybrid company where humans and AI partner to be better.

Q. Many tech companies are laying off, and AI is said to mean fewer workers are needed.

A. It's used as an excuse, it's more the macro context. In our case, we have not laid off. With AI, jobs will change, but every revolution generates important changes. We like the benefits of the Industrial Revolution, and it was not without change, but we are very positive about the impact of AI. It will allow us to greatly increase productivity. Certain things we will do much faster, and surely we will have ideas to continue doing others. AI is on everyone's lips because on November 30 OpenAI launched ChatGPT. What happened that day was surprising in several ways: it put a language model that already existed into an interface that made it accessible. To converse with AI I use my own language. It requires nothing more than having access to an internet that already exists to be able to converse.

Q. Its growth is meteoric.

A. For me it is comparable to the birth of the internet. It even has a much higher adoption speed. For the internet to be popular it was necessary to connect, have hardware, lines that reached your home ... It took time to develop. Today, on the infrastructure we have, and conversing in a language that you understand, your mother and grandmother understand, everyone has the same access to be able to use it. That greatly accelerates adoption. ChatGPT reaches one million users in just five days, which took social networks much longer.

Guibert Englebienne, during the interview, this Friday. JUAN BARBOSA

Q. When you see Elon Musk and other big names in the industry calling for a pause in AI, what do you think?

A. That many players are asking for a pause today reminds me of the resistance to change when progress comes. Throughout history the best recipe for progress has been to embrace change. We don't have institutions to regulate AI. When cloning appeared, there were institutions to ban it. Our governments know very little about the subject. The other challenge is the disparity we can generate. Italy blocked the use of ChatGPT, and that put Italian companies at a disadvantage compared to those in other places that do have access. You're self-harming by regulating it. Suppose we paused. Are the Chinese going to put it in? There are important geopolitical issues.

Q. Isn't there a risk that a certain bubble will be created around AI, or that some will exaggerate its benefits?

A. There is a gap, as in any emerging trend, between what is talked about and what is actually done. However, trends in general have cycles. And this one has already passed them. I was studying AI in the 80s, and I had started even earlier. It comes and goes. What makes this new wave different is that the enormous availability of data generated by social networks and the processing capacity developed through the gaming industry with graphics processors, enable the training of large neural networks that simulate a human brain and have much better results than other forms of AI that we saw in the past. We give tons of data to a system and the computer starts learning on its own as we do when we are born and train our neurons.


Q. Are there risks to intellectual property?

A. If I watch La Gioconda and make a painting inspired by it, there is no copyright problem. Although it is true that there are a lot of legal and ethical aspects around this. We have been the founders of an alliance that brings together experts, universities and investment funds to support entrepreneurs to attack the collateral effects that technology brings. Today, after 15 or 16 years exposed to social networks, we can identify that the time of addiction on screen, cyberbullying, the polarization generated by the information we consume or the use of devices while driving has side effects. With AI we did the same: we launched a manifesto that says we must take care of the type of data we use to train systems, give transparency and explain what data we use.

Q. Globant was created in Argentina, is it more difficult to start there?

A. Argentina is the place where more unicorns have come out of Latin America. Beyond the economic difficulties that Argentina always proposes. The capacity of Argentine entrepreneurs stands out. It is a great place to undertake. Many times the lack of certain things makes you think about others. In areas like cryptocurrencies there are a lot of very interesting projects.

Q. When we talk about technological entrepreneurs we tend to highlight the epic of the garage, is there romanticization or is it really like that?

A. We started in a bar with $5,000 and the bartender's blessing. And we had about 150 globers by the time we received the first round of funding in 2005. Entrepreneurs sometimes put the wrong focus on looking for capital and make an excuse. When you have the ability to make a small but profitable business, and make that develop the business, it allows you to delay the first round of capital and dilute less.

Follow all the information of Economy and Business on Facebook and Twitter, or in our weekly newsletter

75% discount

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Read more

I'm already a subscriber

Source: elparis

All business articles on 2023-05-30

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.