ES+ | No.3 | 2025/2026 On the horizon, Regina Llopis sees an uncertain future, though not too bleak a one. The mathematician has no doubt that Artificial Intelligence will be “smarter than us one day”, but she qualifies this statement: “it will always be controlled by us”. Can Spain become a benchmark in international research? Yes, because of its favourable geography, culture and society, which attract talent. Spain also has excellent water resources, so it could potentially have large data centres. We have the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, a great institution. How can we improve to become a more scientific country? We need to improve education. The students who are about to start their baccalaureate know nothing about mathematics or science. We have a problem with tolerance. We must apply the rigour that quality education demands. If “X” is tending towards infinity, where is the world heading? The world faces challenges that everyone is aware of. We have wars and population growth and migration that we do not know how to manage. But we have also been through a pandemic, and we have demonstrated our ability to coordinate through collective effort. If we were able to do it with Covid, we have to start doing it in other contexts. 111