Artificial intelligence, data science, machine learning, big data. These terms became part of the everyday public discussion, often appearing in the contemporary political, economic, social, and even philosophical discourse. Few areas have remained immune to this impact.

In this presentation, Mário Figueiredo will begin by explaining what artificial intelligence and automatic learning are and how they fit into the more general context of data science. He will give a historical perspective on how the explosive development of these tools is closely linked to the generalization of Internet access.Finally, he will describe a wide range of applications, some clearly good (e.g., fighting poverty, medical diagnosis, preservation of endangered species), others obviously bad (such as interference in elections and cyber-terrorism) and several others about which he will not make any value judgment, leaving the discussion of their impacts to the second day of this series of debates and presentations.

Mário Figueiredo has PhD and habilitation degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering, from Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, where he is a professor. He is also a senior researcher, area coordinator and group leader at Instituto de Telecomunicações. His research fields are machine learning, image processing and analysis, and optimization. Since 2014, he has been included in the prestigious Highly Cited Researchers (Clarivate Analytics) annual list, being the only Portuguese that holds this distinction in the areas of engineering or computer science.