A talk between Gabriel Boric and a rockstar of political philosophy; Covid diagnosis by phone and uninterrupted transmission for nine hours: three things that will surprise us in Future Congress – La Tercera

In 2011, on the occasion of the celebration in Chile of the Bicentennial of the National Congress, the challenge of a great scientific meeting arose. Thus, Future Congress was born. 11 years after that date, the event has already become the largest scientific dissemination event in the country and in Latin America.

This year it will take place for the second consecutive year online, due to the pandemic. Between January 17 and 21, the Future Challenges Commission of the Senate and the Future Encounters Foundation (FEF)will present a total of 80 experts from 20 countries. Among them, Anthony Fauci, the main adviser to the White House for the current health crisis, Gonzalo Moratorio, a virologist who designed the Uruguayan response against the virus, and Harald Zur Hausen, a Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, a German scientist and doctor, who discovered the role of human papilloma virus.

Among the novelties that the 2022 version will have, Nicolás Fernández, executive director of Fundación Encuentros del Futuro, highlights three that in his opinion will surprise us during the event.

The first big surprise or novelty of Future Congress 2022 it will come from the hand of the new president of Chile. “Philosopher Michael Sandel, who was recently confirmed, will speak with Gabriel Boric on Thursday afternoon, probably via Zoom. We will have a conversation between this political philosopher, considered the most relevant of the 21st century, and Gabriel Boric”, says Fernández.

Sandel writes books about meritocracy, economics. “He is like the counterpart of Carlos Peña in the United States, both write in the same line of political philosophy. He has the most requested Harvard class by students. Is a rockstar of political philosophy. They will speak closing the official day of the event”, he adds.

Another great novelty will be associated with the development of artificial intelligence. As is often the case with technological progress, on many occasions, advances occur more quickly than expected. In this case, it is a solution associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. Which promises to be a total revolution in the field.

Fernández explains that “we have the possibility, through a phone call and two questions, that in a few minutes we can determine the possibility that a person has Covid-19. The platform, which it’s called scanvox and it belongs to the Merlin Research company, just by listening to the voice, you can make a forecast. That is artificial intelligence. Through thousands of conversations from people who had the virus, he understood the type of sequence and sound that they generated, which allows capturing and crossing the data”.

The system that will be part of the Future Congress will be applied to all the people, officials and exhibitors, who will receive a daily call, asking or proposing things such as: Count to ten in a certain way. “On the phone you answer and automatically when you finish the call you get an email where says the percentage and probability you have of being infected”, Explain.

If it is greater than 75%, an alert is triggered and the health system is informed, and you have to do a PCR. “It allows us to test work teams and to date it keeps us with zero contagions to the team. Only one person, external, it yielded more than 75% and was indeed infected. The process studies the audiometry of the voice. It doesn’t tell you if you’re infected, it’s a probability. It could be a technology that could be incorporated by communes or other establishments and institutions. It even manages to discriminate between flu symptoms and Covid-19″, explains Fernández.

Future Congress in its XI edition will also surprise its virtual attendees with two other great novelties. According to Fernández, “we always had a space at lunchtime where we lowered the transmission, which meant that people were disconnected, and then the connection in the afternoon was super slow.”

That is why we thought of generating an extra space called CF News, with different journalists, explains Fernández, “and thus ensure that the transmission of Future Congress is uninterrupted from nine in the morning until 6:00 p.m. As in other channels, after the morning block, we will have news, and then the afternoon block. It will include different spaces, with what happens in the event and also general science news and current affairs”.

The idea is to have a space where people do not disconnect, “and support and disseminate content that we were unable to show in Future Congress, in a much simpler format. We hope that it can captivate the audience”, explains Fernández.

Along the same lines, “we will present a small initiative called We Have a Dilemma, which is a space where the public can register and have a live conversation with different exhibitors who have already given their talk. For example, if one of them exposes one day at 10 in the morning, then at 12 they connect by Zoom, answering all the questions that people had pending. It is a B format where you can talk and debate with the experts who come to Future Congress. It was one of the criticisms we had every year, the lack of interaction between people and exhibitors. And this space comes to correct that”, Fernandez reveals.