Lisbon, March 24, 2026 (Lusa) – Artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Carlos Manuel de Oliveira told Lusa on Tuesday that AI is unavoidable for society and, within a decade, it will be as important as electricity.
The specialist in "Humantech AI Marketing Futures" spoke to Lusa on the sidelines of the GfK conference "#0 years deciphering the market," dedicated to analysing the trends that are transforming the consumer technology goods market, at the Museu do Oriente, in Lisbon.
Asked about the impact of artificial intelligence on society, Carlos Manuel de Oliveira stated that "it is happening at all levels," although people sometimes do not realise it.
"For how many years has the normal consumer, the normal person, dealt with instruments, with artificial intelligence, and they don't realise it," he continued, noting that the use of AI has been increasing progressively.
Despite artificial intelligence being something talked about since the 60s, it was only in 2023, with the emergence of ChatGPT, an OpenAI model, that it began to have visibility.
Currently, "artificial intelligence has a very large impact in certain areas, for example, in the area of healthcare, medicine, and genetic engineering," the researcher pointed out.
"Perhaps people also do not know, but it would not have been possible to obtain a vaccine for Covid-19 in one year; normally, a new drug or a new vaccine takes 10 years for testing, if there had not been artificial intelligence," he said.
Therefore, "it was with artificial intelligence techniques that the vaccine was achieved."
At this moment, "it is possible that, for example, through devices, through microchips, tetraplegic people, who do not even have the capacity to express themselves, move external equipment, play a game, just with their thoughts," he said.
This is something "that would not have been imagined a few years ago," he added.
"I am talking about concrete current examples, I am not talking about futurism," said the AI researcher and founder of Humantech.
He also gave the example of AI used in the field of imaging, where artificial intelligence techniques are used to interpret these types of exams, as well as the financial area, where "new technology companies" use the technology "to perform client risk analysis and to make risk projections for the future."
Another example was agriculture, where "some African countries use techniques" for irrigation, soil assessment, robotics, and drones.
Education and research are also other areas where AI is used: "It is widely used for the design of personalised educational and training programs based not only on the person's characteristics, but on the person's own learning characteristics."
In the research part, "the creation of papers and documents is much easier today. When we are researching, we can have access to decades of intellectual production, synthesised into small texts," he noted.
AI is "unavoidable" for society. Artificial intelligence "will be talked about 5 years from now, maybe 10, like electricity. Today, no one can live without electricity," he highlighted.
AI will become "embedded in everything that we, as people, as a society, and as professionals, do," he emphasised, noting that he sees this "in a positive light."
The problem with artificial intelligence "is that it has such an exponential evolution that society will have some difficulty in readapting."
This readaptation "will be complicated" for those who are far from these techniques.
According to de Oliveira, new professions will emerge, and new abilities will also be awakened.
"Ultimately, I believe that embedding all productive activity with artificial intelligence will generate an increase in productivity" that will enable companies to pay people more and have more free time, he concluded.
ALU/RYOL // ADB.
Lusa
