Description of the partner
Telefónica is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the world. It provides fixed and mobile telephony, broadband, and subscription television, operating in Europe and the Americas, and yes, they are part of SPATIAL.
Their innovation division, Telefónica I+D, is one of the main research and development actors in the European scene. They count with a long experience in new network architectures and are involved in several internal initiatives and collaboration projects related to them. The team also has a long experience in participating and contributing to standards organisations and open source initiatives.
Within SPATIAL, they will be in charge of one of the validation scenarios related to Privacy-preserving AI on the Edge and beyond. Let’s meet Souneil Park and know what he has to say about their role within SPATIAL.
Principal Investigator
SOUNEIL PARK
I work in the areas of computational social science, HCI, and information visualization. My research interest is in urban informatics, combining data-driven methods and urban geography. Prior to joining Telefonica, I worked on analyzing online media use and developing technologies to enhance people’s ability to comprehensively understand, reason, and make well-informed decisions.
How did you started/joined/enrolled SPATIAL?
I am personally interested in building technology for social justice, socio-economic fairness, and transparency. The rapid technical advances are often tied with the rhetoric of innovation, which mystifies the actual implementation. I believe SPATIAL is an important effort which comprehensively examines the impact of the advances and holds them accountable.
What are your expectations in a project of this nature?
I envision SPATIAL identifying unexpected consequences of AI methods considering various groups of people (e.g., socio-economic minorities, people with limited technology access) and bringing new solutions to reducing the risk of isolation or discrimination.
What can the research community expect from SPATIAL?
One line of research in Telefónica is to explore machine learning and AI particularly with the focus on understanding the value of personal data and privacy. In the process, we take advantage of the large-scale telecommunication infrastructure deployed across multiple countries. We will contribute research that examines various potential use-cases on top of the infrastructure.
Where do you see SPATIAL results in 10 years?
As a key partner of SPATIAL, we aim at developing accountability solutions that protect personal data and privacy for the services running on top of the mobile, IoT, and edge infrastructure. We hope the solutions, in the long term, serve as a common building block of the services and free the service developers and users from potential risks.
*Copyright: Pedro Antonio Pérez