Communication is ingrained into our way of understanding the world and our ability to define it. However, at present, with communication flowing in thousands of directions, it is now that clarity in the presentation of ideas is most conspicuously absent. Under this premise, Clara came about, a prodigy of Artificial Intelligence and linguistics that is something like having the famous Spanish novelist and journalist Pérez Reverte by your side helping you to write clearly… but without his clear desire to stir up controversy on Twitter.

LET ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COME TO LIFE! AND CLARA ARRIVED IN SPANISH

Clara is the result of applying Artificial Intelligence to Spanish for the first time. It’s a tool that allows one to measure the clarity of texts, for which it uses AI and computational linguistics. It’s also capable of offering suggestions for improvements to make texts clearer.

Of course, Clara is not the result of a happy idea. Rather, it's the result of a transformation in society over time, and a need that arose in the United Kingdom in the 1950s when, after the disaster of the Second World War, reconstruction began. Citizens needed access to public funds in order to rebuild the country, but they weren’t able to understand what steps they had to take to apply for the aid they needed. This was the beginning of a line of thought that upheld people’s right to understand, which spread around the world during the middle of the twentieth century.

This line of thought was taken up enthusiastically by Prodigioso Volcán, a public relations agency born out of a love for language and, above all, a belief in putting people at the centre; a holistic view of the way in which we communicate that they have embodied in their Clear Communication Manual and in the book El Derecho a entender (The Right to Understand). Thus , developing Clara in collaboration with the Autonomous University of Madrid was not a giant leap, but rather the next logical step.

Clara has come to life within the agency thanks to three women: Sonia Oquendo, Ana Pina, and Judith González. To do this, they had to build a written corpus with some clear texts and some not-so-clear ones, label a large number of them, and check for consistency. Training the AI so that it would know how to differentiate a clear text from one that is more muddled was an arduous task. However, as in any process involving human beings, there can be biases, which renders the equation more difficult. According to Judith González:

It was a long and complicated process, but one that helped to accomplish something very complex: doing away with the subjective idea of "I don't understand this text" or "This text seems pretty clear to me", demonstrating that writing clarity can be measured based on objective criteria. Quite an achievement.

But Clara goes beyond being a simple tool. According to Sonia Oquendo,

"This has a bit of social activism built in".

It is about conceiving science as a whole, bringing together various disciplines in a single project. According to Judith González:

"The arts and sciences are only separated at school and at universities; outside of that context, in the real world, things don't work that way".

According to Ana Pina,

"The learning involved creating tools that help people and that, in the future, will do so even more by fusing technology and the humanities."

Thus, behind Clara lies a deep desire to democratise communication, in addition to a great technological revolution, a struggle to not leave anyone out of this complex communication system in which we live, making it accessible and, above all, understandable to all citizens, without any kind of distinctions.

BEING ASLEEP IS NOT THE SAME AS SLEEPING

As Camilo José Cela said: "Being asleep is not the same as sleeping, just as being screwed is not the same as screwing". The fact is that communication must be clear and precise to be understandable. But, at this point, the question is obvious: what determines how clear a text is? Of course, whether or not it can be understood; but, beyond this, a certain group of disciplines and knowledge can help us to achieve greater clarity.

• Clear language: this is the basis of clear communication. It's a way of writing, of using vocabulary and grammar that allows texts to be understood by everyone, especially people with cognitive or intellectual disabilities or low cultural/social educational levels.
• A picture is worth a thousand words: visual language favours the understanding of the message. The proper combination of texts, images, and a good structure makes everything simpler and easier to digest. To this end, web design is a fundamental part of clear communication. Good communication will create a much more appealing user experience.
• Context does matter: depending on the text's level of specialisation, one must adjust the precision of the language they use. For example, in legal texts each word must be chosen well, as their level of specificity will make them less prone to confusion and subjective interpretation. It's important to know the rules of communication that apply in each context. Also, in order for the text to gain clarity, it's necessary to be familiar with who the text is aimed at, and their knowledge of the subject.
• Science is power: User-centred neurolanguage provides criteria to optimise the clarity of texts. Analyses such as eye tracking (studying the parts of a screen that we pay the most attention to), taking into account the cognitive biases of our brain, and facilitating mental reading processes are all tools that can facilitate clear writing.

All these criteria or rules that help us to construct a message that is easier to understand, however, may be too much for a single person to handle. Let's face it, it's easier if we have a kind of scorecard to tell us what's right and what's wrong. And this is where Artificial Intelligence can help us. Clara is like the Thermomix that knows the ingredients by heart and exactly how long it takes to produce a fluffy cake.

THE WALL OF SHAME

Communication floods everything and, of course, this is true in governmental offices as well. We live surrounded by regulations, rules, contracts, procedures, etc., all of which largely condition our lives. And the truth is that they seem to be written so as not to be understood. This creates an invisible barrier between governmental bodies and citizens. A great wall that separates us and that only generates mistrust, weariness, and, let's be honest, a bit of embarrassment.

You've surely encountered this wall dozens of times: a letter from city hall, a traffic ticket, a court summons, the dreaded tax return and the PADRE software for reporting yearly income (which no one understands), etc. Often opening a letter makes you feel just like you did when you were called to the blackboard at school and didn't know the lesson.

It's true that, in recent times, there seems to have been a paradigm shift. According to Sonia Oquendo at Prodigioso Volcán,

"We citizens have always felt like it was our duty to understand the government when, in reality, it's our right".

The so-called "Transparency Law" seems to have been an attempt to remedy this situation. But, according to Sonia: