«The Ladies in Waiting», Data and Technology

I walk down the stairs and into a dark corridor. As long as I'm not surprised by the video projections of "The Ladies in Waiting", I enter a sensory journey full of questions: "What is this music? I know this... no, wait! It can't be..." - I hear it, but I don't believe it, like the feeling of a Portuguese sailor when she turns left on the wave and comes across Brazil. The truth is that I'm a passionate reggaetonera with a crush for, well, slightly more erudite music. The music apps didn't get there, but luckily there was a QR code on the walls of the museum, which allowed me to identify this acoustic pinnacle - "The Four Seasons, Winter, 1st Movement, I. Allegro non molto, Concerto in F Minor, Op. 8 No. 4 by GuitarCello". This is only for those who like to dip their fries in their sundae, but I still invite you to try this delicious Caribbean Vivaldi.

And don't say it isn't true, buzzwords do work. I love art, but it was the expressions "tech museum", "hologram" and, with some modesty I admit, "immersive experience" that led me to the Velázquez Tech Museum in Madrid.

But the tentacles of technology are not only seen in culture. Recently, at the "Building the Future" event, sponsored by Microsoft and developed by iMatch, after my brain was already frying generative AI hamburgers, and I could no longer use the words "efficiency, productivity, advantages, benefits...", Cara Antoine (Capgemini Netherlands) shook us up a bit with a case of technology with a social impact. In other words, technology designed to solve a very human and social problem. "Seeing AI" is a free app that literally narrates the whole world around us. As described in the App Store, it was designed with and for the blind and low-vision community, and is an ongoing research project that harnesses the power of AI to make the visual world known, describing people, text and nearby objects.

I've woken up feeling good about life, so you're only going to read good things about data and technology. There are plenty of them too! At the Nova SBE Data Science Knowledge Center, we have a natural tendency to inundate students and teachers with challenges of this nature. Some examples include using data to better classify merchants in order to support fraud identification (project currently underway between Master's in Business Analytics students and SIBS); improving the classification of scientific research in health, specifically to promote medical knowledge about Multiple Sclerosis (project currently underway between Master's in Business Analytics students and Gregory AI); improving the digital platforms of the ACM - High Commission for Migration (now AIMA), to facilitate the process of integrating migrants in Portugal; the radical transformation of the process of buying and selling real estate, through a more secure and transparent process based on blockchain (with Unlockit, as part of a project funded by the PRR: "Decentralizing Portugal with Blockchain"); or the collection and analysis of data for greater knowledge of the population of South Sudan, with regard to hygiene habits, immunization, pre- and post-natal care, infant nutrition, among others (with UNICEF and New Angle).

Life is beautiful with technology by our side, you just have to drink in moderation.