Manuel de Almeida / Lusa
Former Prime Minister, Pedro Passos Coelho
The former prime minister stated that the State has been “a very big obstacle to the growth of the economy”, pointed out a “miserable forecast” from 2027 onwards and considered that “little is being done” in State reform.
Pedro Passos Coelho was speaking at the launch of the essay “Economy, Innovation and Artificial Intelligence”, published by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, in Lisbon, when he said that the State is still a very big obstacle to economic growth.
The former Prime Minister stressed that this is not a “partisan issue”, because there have already been several parties in the Government, but left one more warning: “There is a lot of talk about State reform, but little is done about it.”
The current university professor argued that, with the generalization of artificial intelligence, Portugal must distinguish itself through the “quality of institutions and the ability to invest adequately in human capital”.
“And then we have a big delay in relation to our partners. When we look at the forecasts of most international institutions, see what the The forecast for per capita growth from 2027 onwards: it’s miserableand even without being ‘per capita’, it is miserable. We will return to our long-term trend, which is around 1%, 1.1%”, he predicted.
“If we continue like this, It’s not artificial intelligence that will save us”, he warned.
What goes wrong, for Passos Coelho
Asked, specifically, how the State can support companies and the economy in order to make the most of the potential of artificial intelligence, Passos Coelho criticized, for example, the way in which Portugal has accessed European financing.
“We misuse European funding intended for research and development. We misapply (…) There are a type of companies that specialize in capturing these funds and that prevent others from accessing them”, he considered, saying that there is, in this area, a very biased ecosystem” in which “It’s always the same people who receive the support”.
The former Prime Minister considered that if companies that take advantage of this financing “neither grow nor innovate more than others who don’t receive it”, there is “something that isn’t working well”.
“When we move from Portugal 2020 to Portugal 2030 and nothing has changed in the way we consider the distribution of resources, there is something here that is not working well. The State is not using AI to draw conclusions, to change processes, to invest in a different way and this is urgent today”, he defended.
Passos – who assured that he was not “a pessimist” – considered, even so, that the artificial intelligence has riskshow to make the human factor more easily replaceable.
“We can be highly productive for those who are working, but people will have less and less to live on, because they will not be needed to produce anything”, he warned, warning that fewer jurists or fewer people are now needed in the field of Medicine.
Therefore, he argued, public policies must act so that each country bets on what can distinguish them from others and which will no longer be technology, “known by everyone and which can be appropriated by everyone”.
“We cannot sit idly by”appealed.
