The president of Telefónica España and global head of the B2B business, Borja Ochoa, has warned that artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing at an "absolutely exponential" pace and has pointed out that Europe "is arriving late" to the technological struggle against the United States and Asia, putting at risk its own "European sovereignty" and "technological autonomy".
In his speech at the APD Congress of Executives, the executive emphasized this Wednesday that the company is immersed in a "radical change" at an organizational level and called for greater scale and more agility in community regulation in order to compete in the new global technological scenario.
Ochoa emphasized that AI differs from previous technological revolutions by the speed at which it is spreading and by an impact focused "exclusively on productivity".
Internal reorganization at Telefónica
At the internal level, Ochoa explained that Telefónica aspires to consolidate itself as a "benchmark artificial intelligence company".
To achieve this objective, the operator is carrying out a "very aggressive" program within its strategic plan that entails a profound transformation supported by two major axes.
On the one hand, after reviewing "80-90% of the company's processes", the group has driven a "complete redefinition of the business process leveraging the capacity that technology gives us".
On the other hand, the telecom company seeks to "equip" its teams with artificial intelligence tools and adjust the organizational structure as the change is implemented throughout the corporation.
As Ochoa has stressed, "a very important part of the expected growth" in the strategic plan comes directly from the implementation of this new framework.
European gap and technological autonomy
Regarding the situation in Europe, Ochoa acknowledged that the United States and Asian markets "have an advantage over the European market".
To illustrate that distance, he indicated that in AI Europe is "only capturing 4%" of global revenues, compared with previous shares of 23% in Internet, 19% in the mobile business or 15% in cloud, also highlighting that in the United States "11 times more is invested than in all of Europe".
The executive warned that "having excessive dependencies on technology that you do not control can generate complex situations for you" and insisted on the urgency of achieving "technological autonomy".
To close the gap with the United States and China, Ochoa has called for "regulation that is very aligned with what the need is today," giving as an example of what should not be replicated the framework regulation on access to infrastructure, "which was defined 20 years ago" for a scenario that has already become obsolete.
Likewise, he has called for promoting the consolidation of the European market because "in order to invest you need scale" —contrasting the "35 or 40 operators" that operate in Europe with the three major players in the US— and "changing the pace in decision-making" in order to align regulation with innovations that occur "week by week".