How will the Tec use its new Artificial Intelligence Hub to innovate?

Photography | Jorge Vázquez

Tec de Monterrey has inaugurated Mexico’s first Artificial Intelligence (AI) Hub to encourage the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence and generate projects with a high social and economic impact.

The aim is to put Mexico at the forefront of this technology in Latin America.

The AI Hub will be national in scope, coordinated by the School of Engineering and Sciences (Escuela de Ingeniería y Ciencias, EIC) and located at the Tec’s Guadalajara campus.

As Mexico’s technological node, this city has earned the title of the “Mexican Silicon Valley”.
 

Enrique Cortés, leader of the initiative, explained that this hub is the only one in which academic, public, private, and civil society sectors converge.

Ricardo Swain, Western Region Dean for the EIC, explained that a hub is an open ecosystem or specialized environment that concentrates efforts in one area of knowledge, such as AI.

However, he emphasized that a Hub also involves connecting with the community to encourage innovation.

What makes it different is that these connections are mainly made with civil society, industry, companies, entrepreneurs, public sector, and investors.

The AI Hub will focus on specialized consultancy services in these technologies and accelerating companies that use AI. It will begin with 14 startups of this kind.

As regards education and research, it will have several lines of work:

• Machine Learning and Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision
• AI Ethics and Transparency
• Open data models for AI, and finally,
• Design, construction, and measurement of applied AI.
   

A TANGIBLE PROJECT ON THE HORIZON

This Hub’s first tangible proposal is the fAIr Jalisco project, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IBD).

Its 3-year goal is to solve selected social issues  in this state in the areas of health, education, and social welfare.

This first project, fAIr Jalisco, will have a tripartite fund of 2.9 million dollars: the IBD providing 1.45 million dollars, the Government of Jalisco contributing 450,000 dollars, and Tec de Monterrey putting in one million dollars.

Mario Arauz, General Coordinator of Governmental Innovation for the Government of Jalisco, said that several areas were chosen so that predictive models could be developed using AI.

These areas are:

• Diabetic retinopathy,
• Student retention; and
• Preventing juvenile delinquency.

“We’ll be working very closely with civil society and academia to develop these solutions based on real needs.

“We’ll be innovating on institutional processes, always doing so with the highest possible sense of ethics and responsibility to bring about positive change,” added Arauz.

The Goverment of Jalisco will open up its data so that the solutions generated by Jalisco’s AI Hub can create public policies or enterprises focused on resolving these issues.
 

DAY OF AI

The “IMAGINA Forum, Day of Artificial Intelligence” was held at the Guadalajara campus to present the Hub to the student community and society at large.

This included lectures, a panel, and activities throughout the day.

David Garza, Rector of Tecnológico de Monterrey, emphasized at the inauguration that the AI HUB forms part of the Tec’s strategic vision.

He said that its goal will be to encourage the application of ethics and to give priority to solving social or educational issues.

“Tec de Monterrey is always pushing for innovation as an engine for the development of our society. This Artificial Intelligence Hub is proof of that.

“We’re fascinated by technology. We’ve implemented the most innovative technological advances in our educational programs,” said Garza.

“We’ve been emphasizing the importance of Artificial Intelligence for more than 30 years. We were the first in Mexico to hold a symposium exclusively on this subject.

“We can now say with pride that we have nearly 600 PhD graduates in this area,” he added.
 

STRATEGIC PARTNERS

The AI HUB will have the following technological firms as partners:

• Amdocs,
• IBM,
• Intel,
• Sparkcognition,
• Tata Consultancy Services, and
• Wizeline.

It will have the following partners in the academic sphere:

• University of California, Berkeley,
• Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT),
• The French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (INRIA), and
• The IBD.

Jesús Palomino, General Manager at Intel in Guadalajara and representative of the Hub’s partner companies, said that this will create an AI ecosystem for projects, incubation, and training.

“We realized that there was an area of opportunity in which Tec de Monterrey could shine and become a leader in one of the most important areas of technology development for the future,” said Ricardo Swain.

Although there are already research centers in this area in Mexico, “The Tec Hub is the first project in Mexico to include all institutions involved in the AI ecosystem, from public and private sectors to social and academic ones,” he concluded.

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