Universities from Portugal, Brazil and Spain will discuss the transition to digital technologies together

Deans of the Tordesilhas group from universities in Portugal, Spain and Brazil met in Brasilia to discuss the digital transition and its socio-economic implications for society, the group’s president told Lusa.

The event was attended by rectors from 55 universities, 24 from Brazil, 21 from Spain and 10 from Portugal. The main topic was the role of the university in socio-economic development in “countries whose higher education research systems have very close ties,” said Rui Luse. Vieira de Castro, Rector of the University of Minho, now elected President of the Tordesillas Group, on the sidelines of the closing ceremony of the conference at the Portuguese Embassy in Brasilia.

The rector of Minho University stressed that the three countries are aware of the existence of common problems, such as “the digital transition and the deeply radical transformation that we are experiencing.”

These problems create “serious consequences for educational activities, social relations, relations with knowledge,” said the president of the group, which seeks to promote cooperation between institutions in the fields of science and technology, with an emphasis on science and education.

“The impact is very strong and creates serious problems that need to be addressed with knowledge,” he stressed.

In response to Lusa’s question, Ruy Vieira de Castro said that artificial intelligence such as Chat Gtp “is present at these conferences.”

If, on the one hand, “they are also the result of the activities of the institutions themselves that generate knowledge,” on the other, “they allow the production of technological solutions that will pose new challenges,” he specified.

“We have a regenerative artificial intelligence tool that offers institutions very different ways of acting and producing knowledge,” he explained.

The official also said that university assessments are “largely based on student writing.”

“The belief that an institution is capable of controlling the quality of texts is completely compromised when it has at its disposal an instrument” with limitations, but which is nevertheless “capable of producing texts that are coherent, texts that are coherent and fully respectable.” questions asked,” he said.

Institutions must now find ways to “incorporate this input that can be generated,” he stressed, adding that the focus must now be on “the ability to think critically, creatively, while the individual has control over the information.”