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Eduardo Mangarelli en reciente U-Tech Durazno: «Nuestro conocimiento tiene que evolucionar igual que la tecnología»

30/06/17

Area Manager for Microsoft in Keynote on Technology Disruption
Reading time: 5 minutes

Eduardo Mangarelli is Uruguayan, but he must be one of the most shared compatriots in the world. As if he were a football player, he is the Luis Suárez of computer companies. He manages Microsoft's innovation and technology area in Latin America, and he does it from Montevideo. Obviously, he interacts with Bill Gates, but that does not prevent him from making time to come to Durazno and give a 40-minute keynote speech at the UTEC auditorium. It was in the framework of the 1st edition of U-Tech, a few days ago, and while he was claimed from the mega meeting of Endeavor in the capital of the country.

 

Passionate as a teacher and as a systems engineer, every sentence is a learning concept -especially for IT students learning in the capital city of the center of the country- "Access to training and education around technology must be democratized. The impact of technology, in a reality where the future is today, the future is happening faster and faster. And for those linked to technology and those who are currently training in it, to share the enormous scenario of opportunities at local, regional and global level that we can think about and aspire to". With these words he began his talk, in front of a packed auditorium. He then gave examples. To reach the first 50 million people, the telephone took 75 years. Radio took 38 years. TV took 13 years. The internet took 4 years to reach 50 million people. It took Pokemon Go one week to reach 75 million. Things are happening faster and faster, said the computer scientist between calculations. "This can be transposed to things that happen in other countries, elsewhere, but the reality is that globalization and the changing needs of skills for the labor market are expanding and happening faster and faster. The need for talent and training is expanding faster and faster, that's why it is more relevant to talk about it", then he raised some phenomena of the impact of technology today. "It is a generator of differentiation, of value, of disruption. This word has taken on a certain characteristic of fashion, it is a big and abrupt change in a particular business model. Netflix has been a disruptor in the entertainment industry. It started by renting videos, then it created streaming and today it creates content globally. The reality is that if we think about agriculture, finance, health, education, transportation, media, in each industry we can find several examples of companies that based on technology seek to generate a value differential. Improving the efficiency of how that task is performed, satisfying a new demand from users and consumers. Technology is one of the main value generators in any industry we talk about".

 

TECHNOLOGY AT THE SERVICE

Mangarelli cited that "international companies work on technologies born in the region, it is not the future, it is today's reality. From a car that can drive only in certain conditions, for example. It happens because of the development of an aspect of computing sciences, computer vision. It's a discipline within the branch of artificial intelligence, and behind it are programmers who develop the software to be able to interpret in real time the images, and train the computer to make decisions. What's behind this is computer science, software and developed intelligence. The kind of technology behind this is no more complex than what any ICT student in Durazno can get into to develop prototypes", he said as a second interesting example to share in this disruption, the company Monzo, an English company of 30 people. It has a license from the Central Bank of England to operate as a bank. It has no branch or safe, it is an application, a lot of systems in the cloud and from there it provides a specific service in an extraordinary way: it manages payroll accounts. "The company extracts intelligence from the information, and starts telling me things along the lines of 'you can spend on this' or 'I recommend you buy this.' It seeks to provide a service in an extraordinary way. It is born from digital and takes full advantage of the capabilities of digital, analyzing information seeks to break the equation giving a differential value for its users. Analyzing information is within the framework of what we can call today artificial intelligence. The main generator of disruption from technology is artificial intelligence. It is transversal to any type of business where we are". There he cited a Uruguayan startup, Agronóstico, which is dedicated to analyzing historical data on agricultural production in grains to combine with soil type and climate, and project yields and provide suggestions on seeds and so on. "It's a primary industry, and the artificial intelligence phenomenon applies to that scenario as well. If I look today at how the degree of error in detecting and interpreting spoken language has decreased, we're at where a computer listening to a person has a 4.9% degree of error. In November 2016 we achieved that the degree of error is less than human error, we have perfected the interpretation of spoken language compared to human error. It shows the degree of exponential evolution and so we can project how much more precise and accurate it can be in six months or a year", he specified.

 

HERE AND THERE, TECHNOLOGY

Trained as a systems engineer, he created his first company at the age of 19 with a partner. He had formal and practical learning, day by day. Today he has teams of people distributed under his charge throughout Latin America. He lives in Uruguay with the responsibility for a global company like Microsoft. He arrived in Durazno accompanied by his laptop, a bottle of water and a lot of desire to teach. "The first reflection sometimes is that things are used elsewhere, but we democratize access to artificial intelligence. Today there is a set of services for facial recognition, to identify people, to pass text to voice, or vice versa, to put together a system of recommendations where any company that sells products associates buying interests. From Microsoft we seek to provide this packaged intelligence for any company to access without the need to develop each piece. There is an Uruguayan company that sells services for Australia, Europe and the US among other markets, and provides the electronic point of sale. In a store, the salesperson can charge you with the phone without having to go through the cash register. They do that with an Iphone, and found that the salesperson at checkout had to certify the purchase. So they incorporated facial recognition, using the same technology that Uber uses around the world. It is an Uruguayan company that uses the same technology as Uber, and it has to do with globalization and access to such powerful capabilities as facial recognition. Always with concrete examples, providing names of companies from here that are listed there. "When we talk about artificial intelligence, it applies to all industries. When Netflix recommends what to watch, artificial intelligence is behind it. When Facebook recommends us something, behind it is artificial intelligence that learns what things we are interested in and orders the information according to our interests".

 

AT THE END, KNOWLEDGE

Connecting the dots, clearly technology is evolving exponentially. Things that were impossible 10 years ago are now a reality. Eduardo Mangarelli, 42, spoke at UTEC to technology students. "Our knowledge has to evolve exponentially. Part of what is fascinating today is the access to information today, in addition to the education we can receive at UTEC, if today I go to Coursera - an online platform - I find courses that I can take for free from universities in the United States. It does not replace, but complements what I study here. The richness of the availability of online content and resources is up to each of us to do the exercise and put my energy into it. The resources are there, available. The challenge is in prioritizing and how we invest our time. We have to be multidisciplinary to enrich our skills. We must think global, look for opportunities in the world," he concluded.

 

 

Source: ElAcontecer

 

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