Our theme, Speech, Society, and Minorities, focuses directly on reducing inequalities and expanding inclusion through science and technology. By encouraging research in minority languages, heritage languages, and under-resourced communities, the event aims to promote visibility, to combat misinformation and to reduce prejudice, as well as to stimulate the development of speech and language technologies focused in accessibility and the improvement of communication in challenging social contexts. These advances contribute to expanding access to services, education, and citizenship, strengthening the ability to create technological solutions with broad social impact.
The main technological projection is that the advancement of speech-based AI will depend less on new algorithms and more on the quality and diversity of data. This includes research into low-resource languages, considering the current massive expansion into languages and dialects previously ignored by commercial technology.