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In this regard, Anne Lemaistre, Director of the UNESCO Regional Office in Havana, highlighted that there are currently deep ethical concerns about biases, discrimination, prejudices, and stereotypes related to the use of this tool, which must be corrected to put AI at the service of all people.

She also pointed out the validity of implementing the RAM in the context of the recently approved National AI Strategy, which seeks to put ethics and governance of this technology at the forefront. Lemaistre thanked the Cuban government for the invitation to collaborate in this effort.

For her part, the Minister of Communications of the Republic of Cuba, Ms. Mayra Arevich, emphasized that it has never been easy to keep up with technological trends and regulations, not even for developed countries. Therefore, it is a priority for Cuba to evaluate the challenges and risks of AI to continue leveraging technologies and advancing the country's digital transformation.

"Certainly, there is much to be done in terms of regulations," said Ernesto Rodríguez, First Deputy Minister of Communications, who referred to the accelerated pace of life changes and, of course, the current use of AI.

"We cannot renounce its dynamic role in our society, as it is a catalyst in teaching-learning processes," said the official, who considers AI more than a technological phenomenon, a social phenomenon that cannot ignore this humanistic approach.

Another moment of the workshop focused on exchanging with young people from the University of Havana and the University of Informatics Sciences, who discussed the potential of AI and its use in academia.

In a dynamic exercise, students and young professionals from these higher education institutions exemplified some of the biases related to gender, skin color, migration status, among others, that are implicit in the codes of different AI systems and recognized the importance of ethical technology development.

In this context, Claudia Felipe, responsible for the Social and Human Sciences Program at the UNESCO Regional Office in Havana, discussed the RAM, a macro-level instrument that helps countries determine their readiness at a given time to apply AI ethically and responsibly.

The RAM, along with the Ethical Impact Assessment of AI (EIA), constitute the two fundamental pillars of the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, the first global normative instrument in this field approved in November 2021.

On the other hand, Elena Nápoles, National Program Officer for Communication and Information at UNESCO, called on young participants to maintain an ethical stance at all times. "Biases are part of our lives, and if there is no capacity to consciously identify them in the real space, how can an AI tool do it?" she concluded.

In pursuit of more inclusive technology, the panel "The Role of Women in Artificial Intelligence" aimed to evaluate some of the various challenges Cuba faces in the responsible use of AI, without losing sight of the fact that it is already permeated by social biases.

Regarding the ethical principles that should currently guide the development of AI in our country, Dr. Suilán Estévez Velarde, Head of the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Computational Systems at the University of Havana, referred to the transparency and continuous evaluation of systems over time to monitor their behavior.

Meanwhile, she assured that "if we want to look from different perspectives to be more plural, the first thing is to be clear that this will be reflected from the participants and creators involved in the process. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that there are different representations from the first step."

In her intervention, Yailé Caballero Mota, Director of the International Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research in Hebei, China-University of Camagüey Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz, pointed out that it is not enough to be precise but also interpretable, because society cannot be allowed to accept and use AI without understanding what is happening.

"There is a great responsibility for AI developers to create explainable algorithms, but also to have accessible data that can be shared and replicated, so that the scientific community has updated raw material with which to generate algorithms consistent with those already identified by us," explained researcher Caballero Mota.

In agreement, on bias mitigation, María Matilde García Lorenzo, a full professor at the University of Las Villas, said that we cannot only think about algorithms but also about data that generate biases. For this, she mentioned the need to know the representative data of the reality being moderated, as well as understanding how diverse it is and what characteristics such behavior has.

Likewise, academic García Lorenzo suggested going beyond the cognitive aspect and addressing the emotional aspect if the goal is more comprehensive learning.

The commitment to the use of Artificial Intelligence is not only a theoretical endeavor but also a practical one, as evidenced by Cuban state and private companies that have been using this tool in their daily activities for some time.

Representatives from the companies Dofleini, Avangenio, ETI, and the Havana Technology Park gathered to discuss their main experiences in managing AI as an essential complement to the development and quality of their projects.

Alain Garófalo, General Director of Avangenio, highlighted during the meeting that the future with AI is still uncertain, and organizations like UNESCO have a significant challenge in the medium term to act accordingly.