AI cannot “take value to the creation of the human being”, she defends

“ Ocopyright and related rights cannot be understood as a resistance to innovation. They are part of the conditions that allow innovation to happen without taking value to the creation of the human being”, said Minister Margarida Balseiro Lopes, in the panel “Culture: A conversation between generations”, on the second day of Book 2.0, which takes place in Lisbon.

For the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, digital technologies “have already profoundly transformed” the way they create, produce, find and consume content, transformation that is being accelerated by artificial intelligence (IA).

“Change is happening and innovation will continue. The question is another: how do we want to live with her? How can we take advantage of what technology allows us to do without losing what is essential to protect? ", questioned.

Considering this discussion “particularly important for the editorial sector”, for directly touching “in the creation, authorship, circulation of works and value” attributed to the work of creators, the ruler recognized the possibilities opened by the AI, but stressed the need to protect those who create.

“Artificial intelligence can open and open new possibilities, facilitate processes and create new forms of access and relationship to content, but it does not eliminate the need to ensure conditions for authors and other creators to continue to develop their work,” he said.

Author rights “protect the relationship of a work with those who created it, guarantee recognition, contribute to the sustainability of creative activity”.

Margarida Balseiro Lopes considered that this is also “a responsibility between generations”, since the decisions taken today will determine the conditions under which future creators will work in a different technological context.

“The challenge, therefore, is not to choose between technology and human creation. It is in building a balance that allows both to advance, following a reality in transformation, without giving up what we must preserve ", defended.

The minister attributed this responsibility to the entire ecosystem related to the book, from policy makers to authors, publishers, booksellers, libraries, platforms, technological sector and cultural institutions.

In the intervention, Margarida Balseiro Lopes also addressed the promotion of reading among young people and highlighted the results of the second edition of the check-book, recently completed, stating that “45,078 checks were used, more nearly 6,000 than in the previous edition”.

They are “results that show us that we can reach younger people, encourage more of these meetings and that there is room to continue this path,” he said, stressing that the objective of the measure goes beyond the acquisition of a book.

“ More than facilitating the acquisition of a book, we are interested in what can begin from there. A choice, a visit to a bookstore, the discovery of an author or a genre and a contact with reading that can continue beyond that first meeting ", he said.

The Minister also related the promotion of reading to the fight against misinformation, in a context where distinguishing credible sources, false information, arguments, manipulation, facts and opinions became more demanding.

“Reading does not automatically make us immune to disinformation, but it can give us tools to deal with it better,” he said, arguing that reading is used to people “following arguments, seeking context, recognizing contradictions and confronting different points of view.”.

The ruler associated this capacity with the functioning of democracy, which “needs citizens who can form their own opinions, question what they receive, listen to different perspectives and participate in the public space in a free and informed way”.

Promoting access to books and literacy therefore means creating better conditions for such participation and protecting “the freedom of different ideas, of being able to be described, published, read, discussed and contested,” he added.

For the minister, promoting reading cannot depend solely on writers, publishers and booksellers, but also on families, the media and public policies.

“ No one becomes a reader just because they tell him that reading is important,” he said, defending that readers form “through contact, curiosity, freedom of choice and opportunities to find books” that tell them something.

At the end of the intervention, Margarida Balseiro Lopes maintained that the future of the book will not only depend on the format it will take, but on the space that society reserves for reading, knowledge, creation and freedom.

“Not to protect the book from change, as if its future depended on remaining the same as it always was. But to ensure that in the world that will continue to transform, we preserve the conditions that allow books to exist, that there are authors, that there are readers and that ideas continue to circulate freely among us all”.