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The use of artificial intelligence (AI), and its relationship with mathematics, was the main topic addressed at the closing conference of the 2023/24 academic year of the Project for the Detection and Stimulation of Mathematical Talent (EsTalMat) in Salamanca, given by Pablo Armenteros Cosme, researcher in the Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Data Analysis Team of the BISITE Research Group at the University of Salamanca (USAL).

Hosted in the Aula Magna of the Faculty of Sciences at USAL, ESO students and teachers belonging to the EsTalMat project learned about the different applications of AI in the current digital context.

In general, the best-known uses of AI are in voice recognition in assistants and face recognition in device unlocking, image and text generation in Dall-E and Chat GPT respectively; however, AI is also applied in other areas such as mathematics. In this discipline, it is used in statistics, geometry and differential calculus, as well as in linear algebra for working with matrices and vector operations.

As part of the talk, Pablo Armenteros explained to the audience how a neural network works and presented the case of predicting a student's probability of passing an exam, based on the historical data of other students, taking into account the number of hours they had studied for the exam and the hours they had slept the night before.

The data used in the prediction model are available in the free GitHub repository, so that interested parties can download the code and work with it depending on its purpose, increasing the data analysed or adding more layers to the neural network.

During the meeting, there was also a debate on a growing concern among the general public: will AI replace human labour? In response to this question, Pablo Armenteros explained that this technology is being promoted as a means of improving efficiency within companies, where, for example, repetitive tasks are automated and, in turn, workers are allowed to concentrate on more complex and/or creative actions.

In addition, he said, with the advancement of AI, new jobs are created to support its expansion into new markets, through people who are responsible for the development and maintenance of the different systems involved in this technology.

EsTalMat

EsTalMat is a project of the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences carried out throughout Spain to promote mathematical talent in students in the sixth year of primary school and the first year of ESO. Over two years, with a frequency of three hours a week, this project reinforces the training of students with high potential in mathematics.

In Castilla y León, this project is also promoted in conjunction with the Asociación Castellana y Leonesa de Educación Matemática "Miguel de Guzmán" in all the provinces of the Castilla y León region; and, in order to encourage students, it organises different training activities such as the Geogebra CyL Workshop and the Spring Meeting, among other seminars and congresses on this subject.