Concha, the AI for the elderly
Technology is intimidating. Despite the unstoppable transition to what experts have dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution, millions today still need digital skills. Among older people, the digital divide is overwhelming. That's why projects like Concha, second prize in the latest edition of the Terra Creative Jam, are so valuable.
The statistics leave no room for doubt. According to Eurostat, nine out of 10 Spaniards needed to gain advanced digital skills at the beginning of this decade. The diagnosis was especially pessimistic when analyzing the segment of older people, where the digital divide is even more latent due to a lack of training and the purely analog identity that characterizes the generations already six decades old or more.
Once again, the cold numbers illustrate the scale of the problem. In Spain alone, 20% of the population is now over 65, according to the National Institute of Statistics.
In this context, projects such as Concha can provide a lifeline to help bridge the digital divide among older people, especially those living in rural areas.
A mobile AI without an Internet connection
Concha is an artificial intelligence trained to help older people with all the needs, procedures and formalities that have been digitized. An AI to understand how the world of the present (and especially of tomorrow) works and learn how to manage the universe of ones and zeros surrounding us easily.
But Concha is much more than an AI. It’s also a tool that doesn’t need to be permanently connected to the Internet to offer solutions to its users, a variable that differentiates it from the generative AIs that are so successful worldwide. This ability to operate without Internet access can be of great value when approaching rural areas where connectivity is scarce or even non-existent.
However, this is only one of the unique features of the Concha project. The technology has been designed to travel inside a vehicle (ideally a trailer) that can move wherever it’s needed.
This mobile and autonomous character, associated with the power offered by AI solutions, was what led the Terra Creative Jam evaluation panel to award it the second prize in the recently held edition. This initiative is promoted by the Campus Terra through the Area of Valorization, Transfer and Entrepreneurship of the USC (AVTE) in collaboration with the incubator Lug Open Factory.
Behind the Concha project is an interdisciplinary team formed by a social integrator, a social educator, a graphic artist and a Hispanic philologist. Emma Lago, Brandán Candal, Joanee García, Jimena Salgado and Youssef Badsi are the creators of a tool that was born out of the increasingly horizontal nature of the digitalization phenomenon.
The project's promoters explain it in detail: «In a society in which the importance of technology is increasing daily, it’s of great importance that the whole society has access to it and knows how it works. Concha was born wanting to help those small towns that makeup Galicia, which is not a few. Their inhabitants have the right to know and learn technological skills that will help them daily».
Regarding their future plans, the four agree that if they manage to land Concha in the market, their goal will be to improve it. How? Mainly by adding more resources and functionalities to the tool.