The National Center for Artificial Intelligence recently held its second annual workshop entitled “Focusing the route”, bringing together more than 100 Cenia members with the challenge of outlining the goals of the different lines of research, discussing technology transfer projects that could contribute to solving problems in priority areas of society and reflecting on the incursion of Chat GPT and its impact on the course of the development of artificial intelligence. This internal activity was attended by main researchers, associates and collaborators, the team of developers, undergraduate and graduate students as well as the executive team.
A year and a half since its creation, Cenia has reached more than one hundred scientific publications, established partnerships with groups that are in charge of promoting STEM education, developed technological innovation projects with the public and private sector, as well as venturing into little explored areas from computer science, robotics and software development, such as the world of art, culture and social sciences. However, artificial intelligence has set the tone in 2023 with the irruption of Chat GPT into the public sphere, revealing its accelerated progress and raising questions about its role in society and its implications for the future.
In this context, the goal of this meeting focused on the exchange of ideas that will allow to outline the path of research and development efforts for the medium and long term, in addition to defining the strategic direction of the center.
“I want to thank everyone for participating in this workshop, it is great to see each other’s faces, to share again and to see that we still have the desire and motivation to leave our footprint as Cenia. Our current challenge of focusing the route is on track, but the most important challenge is to put it into practice and, with a lot of assertiveness, focus our energies to contribute from each one’s corner to this common crusade,” said Alvaro Soto, director of the National Center for Artificial Intelligence.
Also, Cenia presented during the conference the Ethics Working Group, focused on strategies to address ethical issues that may arise in the design and development of new models of artificial intelligence, as well as the Cenia Gender Equality Committee, a team that is working on setting the principles that will guide the creation of a future Gender Equality Policy for the center.
Areas of critical importance
The technology transfer team, Cenia researchers and postdoctoral students discussed ways to develop AI technologies that can contribute to improving areas of critical importance in society: safety, education, health and sustainable cities that can cope with increasing urbanization in a scenario of climate change.
Cenia is currently developing several projects with social impact together with the public and private sector, including a project that seeks to use the digital twin methodology – a virtual model that accurately reflects a physical object or process – in the public health system, to help manage hours in operating rooms; a low-cost forest fire detection system using image processing; and a project to optimize traffic management in cities through the design of artificial intelligence tools that allow to support a large number of functions that are currently performed in a dispersed and resource-intensive manner.
Check out the photo gallery of the workshop “Focusing the route”
