Latin America Artificial Intelligence Initiative (“LAAII”)

LAAII is developing an innovation hub in LatAm and positioning the region in the forefront of AI.

With 17% of graduates obtaining STEM degrees in the region, LatAm’s growth may be trumped by the lack of a skilled workforce in a global context that demands expertise in emerging technologies. 

Through a combination of projects of massive reach, targeted initiatives, and bringing world class research to the region, LAAII brings awareness, grants access and provides the resources for players (governments, institutions and students) to make AI a reality in LatAm.  

We appeal to students, corporations and governments and bring them together to foster AI in the region. Our initiatives include one of Mexico’s most important AI Conferences (currently in its second edition), cross-country, synchronized massive events for students, executive education programs for top management at large corporations, interactive workshops for students and eventually, the creation of a LatAm AI Research Center.

Latin America’s societal development and economic growth depend on science and technology education and investment to reach their full potential. Yet, according to the OECD, less than 17% of graduates in Latin America attain STEM degrees in the region. Moreover, the private sector in LatAm contributes only 0.63% of GDP to R&D, compared to the OECD’s average of 2.4%. While we have seen individual efforts from the public, private and academic sectors to address these issues, a thorough solution requires all parts to come together to develop policies, programs and incentives to support innovation through the STEM fields. As a result, Latin America has become a source of raw materials and labor for other countries and not a generator of technology, trumping its potential to become a first-world region.

Underprivileged students lack the knowledge or guidance to see STEM as a viable professional path, governments and universities struggle to create programs to incentivize innovation in students and local institutions and companies struggle to find technical talent that meets the demands of the global markets. By bringing together communities, governments and institutions, in different settings, we encourage community-driven innovation and provide the tools to make our vision a reality.

First, we target over 60 million students from secondary education in Latin America, most of whom decide to pursue an academic degree outside STEM based on common misconceptions or biases, like their academic ability (or lack thereof), their perspectives for work after university, or even their fit based on gender. 

Second, we are serving governments and institutions that lack the tools, models or resources to boost innovation but that realize that technology will push Latin America to reach its full potential. 

Lastly, we are benefiting public and private institutions by creating a sense of awareness around AI, getting the Latin American students  to pursue a career path in this technology, thus improving the perspective of a technical talent pool in the near future.

Indirectly, we will impact 650 million Latin Americans by pushing a systemic shift into the adoption of a cutting edge technology across all spheres of society.

Over the past three years, we have created a network of partners committed to the development of AI in Latin America, including UNAM (which controls half of the high schools in Mexico City), the Government of Uruguay, MIT’s Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, RIIAA (a top quality international AI Conference in LatAm) and dozens of undergraduate, masters and PHD students focused on AI, from the world’s most recognized universities. 

Together we have devised a long term vision to generate awareness, inform, empower and provide the tools that will transform Latin America into a hub for AI. 

A first effort to generate awareness was the creation of RIIAA (riiaa.org), a conference that fosters the Mexican and LatAm AI ecosystem across sectors and countries, this year’s second edition will be hosted in August at UNAM. This initiative has served as a platform to bring together all the relevant players already involved in AI (researchers, companies, students, etc). RIIAA has opened a space for dialogue and creation of many of our following initiatives. With a well established platform, we are able to tap into talent, resources, advice, partnerships and sponsors from the world’s best researchers and companies. 

In 2020, we are launching two initiatives. First, an annual AI education event that will gather underprivileged high school students. This will be a one-day massive event that will happen synchronously across three stadiums in three different countries. As of today, we already have Mexico’s UNAM and the government of Uruguay committed to host the event. We will bring over 150 thousand students to an event that will educate and raise awareness about the foundations and bleeding edge of AI. Taking advantage of the media coverage and virality of the stadium event, we are launching executive seminars for top management at large corporations and workshops for students. The executive education initiative will show decision-makers in traditional LatAm companies the potential impact of AI in their respective industries and will provide tools to adopt and implement this new technology in the short term. 

With the interest and support of the local and international AI community, the students, and the decision makers at local companies, we will move forward to build a world-class, state of the art AI Research Lab in LatAm. The technology, research, patents, and startups that result from the AI Lab will create social and economic benefit to all the parties involved. 

There have been several efforts to bring innovation to Latin America. While all these efforts have contributed to the growth of the region, never has there been a united front between countries, private and public entities and students to make this vision a reality. Our innovation comes from a strategic and sequential step by step process that leverages massive and targeted events, to create an unprecedented space where all parties involved can take the first step into bringing AI to Latin America. Our solution aims to change the perception that AI is only available to the lucky few, and to bring new knowledge to a region that has had limited access to a technology that could mold the future of Latin America.

Our massive initiatives, conferences and stadium, bring the spotlight to Latin America, positioning it as a region committed to the development of AI as a tool for growth. To complement this, our targeted initiatives, executive education and student workshops, engage with decision makers and relevant players to create adoption for the technology. The combined effect will help us lobby and push to make governments accountable and responsive for education policies and programs that will expand into the region.

Our solution is deeply rooted in the most cutting edge applications of artificial intelligence to inspire and mobilize governments, companies and students to innovate through AI. At its core, we are a technology group, creating awareness and empowering countries and people with the most advanced technological tools so that the new generation can build a better future for Latin America through innovation.

The global interest and adoption of AI has spread from first world countries to emerging economies, where the application of this technology may even have a more powerful impact in bringing economic equity and inclusion. Our team is uniquely positioned to connect all players and make this technology a reality in LatAm. 

By creating events of massive reach, we show students, local companies and governments, the practical uses and scale that AI can have across industries. Moreover, these events put LatAm on the map as a region to source talent and develop applied research, thus creating a virtuous cycle. 

After incentivizing curiosity and awareness, the targeted initiatives empower decision makers and students with the tools to adopt the technology. The demand for AI talent in companies will be met by the growing interest and adoption from students across the region. 

The group most benefited by this dynamic will be the students, whom will enjoy the public policies and programs pushed by local governments, and the opportunities for professional growth in local and international tech companies. Underprivileged students will see a viable and clear path to pursuing a career in AI or in the STEM fields, as well as the personal and professional implications that this decision may have in their lives.

Ultimately, LatAm’s first world-class AI Research Center will enjoy a growing pool of talented technical individuals, and the interest of the international community, ensuring the realization of a Latin American region fuelled by AI led innovation

Currently: 500 attendees to RIIAA2018, 200 expected students to RIIAA2019 Summer School, 600 expected attendees to RIIAA2019

One year: The stadium initiative will bring at least 100,000 high school students from two different countries, plus 900+ from RIIA2020. Additionally, we expect to have 8 to 10 executive education seminars and 20 to 30 school workshops in the second half of 2020. 

Overall, we expect our 2020 initiatives to directly and indirectly reach at least 200,000 students and dozens of local and international institutions. 

Five years: potential to directly and indirectly reach more than 2 million people across Latin America through the combination of our initiatives.

Within the next year: Consolidate our operations team and create three committees; i) Education Committee, to oversee the creation of the content of our targeted initiaitves (executive and school workshops), ii) Events Committee, to oversee the partners and content of future RIIAA and Stadium events. This will be divided into a Global Committee, and Local Committees for every country, and iii) Research Lab Committee, to oversee the creation of the AI Research Lab Initiative. The first steps into creating these Committee have already taken place as many relevant players will sit together to discuss this topic during RIIAA2019.

Within the next five years: Grow, expand and improve all the initiatives. Reach financial sustainability, mostly driven by the corporate and executive education initiative. Finally, open an AI Research Lab that will serve as a reference and foster the most advanced technological advancements for the region.

Given the large scope of our projects, we have and will continue to face new barriers to accomplish our goals. We have also learned that while we have new barriers with every new initiative, our expertise and network strengthens with our growth. 

To this day, we depend heavily on our partners, governments and companies for sponsorships and grants. As we expand to new countries, local regulation and ways of conducting business will represent another challenge. Lastly, developing the events and content to engage with each of the different players, and translating those efforts into concrete actions from their side will become our greatest challenge. 

Over the past years, we have developed a strong network and operational expertise which we can leverage as we grow in number of projects and number of people reached. 

In Mexico, we can leverage a platform like RIIAA to bring a strong base of relevant players already interested in AI into our future initiatives. Additionally, the growth of the event with every year allows us to better navigate the operational, commercial and logistical challenges of executing events in Latin America. 

Additionally, our team’s expertise and direct AI research knowledge places us in a unique position to access resources at the forefront on AI: published papers, conferences and thought leaders. Moreover, the network we have developed, either through work or through organizing previous events, have already bare fruits, as companies like DeepMind, Facebookd, Google and IBM have already sponsored our events and have shown interest in our future projects. 

Our leadership team is comprised of four students and practitioners from the world’s most recognized universities and companies. 

LAAII has been working on a per-project basis. We work year long in developing the partnerships, concept, content and vision for each of our initiatives, as well as closing sponsorship and commercial agreements. Additionally, we work with our partners to create the content and ensure its effective delivery.

For the execution of the events, LAAII hires professional third-party providers to oversee the logistics, operation and commercial efforts of each initiative, and therefore, the people working on our solution varies throughout the year. 

Multidisciplinary team with experience in the most cutting-edge AI projects and a deep network in the industry. 

Andres Campero - PhD Student at the Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. His research has been presented in conferences and journal across Machine Learning, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and AI. Co-founder of RIIAA and of Stateoftheart.ai. 

Felix Sosa - PhD student in the Psychology Department at Harvard and the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines at MIT. His research has been presented in conferences across the nation on Machine Learning, AI, Evolutionary Computation, and Cognitive Science. He is an AI educator and instructor with the CBMM, developing and teaching courses for high school students across the nation, and undergraduate and graduate students across MIT and Harvard.

Dhyan Adler - Received his Master's in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Technology, Innovation, and Education. He previously worked at Google, and a couple of startups in Mexico and Australia. Dhyan has also worked with instructional design, helping latin american students pursue higher level education. Dhyan is currently doing research in math education in Jon Star's lab. 

Luis Torres - Second-year MBA Student at MIT Sloan, and a fellow at the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT. Prior to business school, Luis was an investment associate at GBM Ventures, investing in early-stage Latin American companies and helping them reach scale. Prior to that, Luis worked at Goldman Sachs (IBD) and at J.P.Morgan (PWM). 

• UNAM (CViCom)
• Government of Uruguay (ILDA)
• MIT’s Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines
• RIIAA (including Google, DeepMind, Facebook and IBM)
• Artificial Intelligence for Development
• Latam Digital Center for Digital Policy in Latin America

Today, our business model is closely tied to grants, donations, scholarships and resources from partner governments, local and international corporations. Because we want to create awareness and empower underprivileged students, we do not charge or significantly subsidize tickets for these people in our events.

Our corporate partners provide financing in the form of sponsorships. Different sponsor levels, with different brand exposure and perks are offered each event. We also benefit from donations and grants from larger, usually tech companies, that have the resources to incentivize the use of AI technology.

Governments, both federal and local, contribute financially, and provide the space and the channels to reach out target customers. They also help as facilitators in the legal processes. 

Financing received from our partners is used to cover costs, mostly operational (provided by third party professionals), rent of the space, and paying marketing campaigns.

In the short-term, we expect executive and corporate education to bring substantial revenue to our operations. While partnerships and sale or tickets will continue to fund a large percentage of each our massive initiatives, we expect executive and corporate education to cover our operational expenses to reach financial sustainability.

In the long term, patents, research, intellectual property and the creation of new companies from our Research Lab will bring additional revenue to sustain and grow the operation and scale of our initiative. 

In the short term, we will be mostly sustained by donations and grants. Individual events are mostly financed by a sponsorship model, where institutions contribute different sums of money depending on the exposure and involvement of their brand on the event. 

In the mid term, we will depend on executive and corporate education to fund our expansion and operations to reach financial sustainability. 

In the long term, we expect the Research Center to bring additional financing from the IP, startups, and technologies developed in the different labs. This additional source of revenue will allow us to open additional Research Centers and expand across the region.

At LAAII, we are excited to be part of Solve because we believe that the resources available by this initiative will help us consolidate our past efforts into the vision we have for Latin America. 

Specifically, we are drawn to the advice and input from experts and peers from the Solve and MIT network to help us think about our solution and enable us to execute on our vision. Moreover, we are excited about the exposure our initiative may have with investors and media, after all, our solution is deeply rooted in our ability to generate awareness and knowledge to the people and institutions that have not had access to this information in the past.

As we shift our approach from an event based initiative to a coercive, sequential and integral vision of bringing AI to Latin America, we hope to obtain business guidance on building a sustainable and scalable business model from experts from the region and the industry.

Finally, we hope Solve can become a platform to bring world class companies as partners and sponsors to our initiative. Our vision incorporates relevant partners in AI for the delivery of programs, creation of content, recruitment of talent and eventually, the creation of a cutting edge research hub to position Latin America in the forefront of Artificial Intelligence.

We are looking to partner with companies and institutions in the forefront of Artificial Intelligence. We are not only looking for sponsorship and funding resources, but also institutions to help us generate relevant and appealing content for students. The Partnership on AI and the big institutions that support it would be a great source for all these resources. Companies like Tesla, DeepMind, AlphaGo Movie and Boston Dynamics could provide speakers, content and share some of their latest technology to develop the program.

Our ultimate goal is to position Latin America in the forefront of Artificial Intelligence research, adoption and practical usage. Our initiative seeks to empower 600 million people in Latin America that are not even aware of the existence of AI and its applications, inform them and inspire them to pursue a career driven by AI, and provide them with the tools to develop and use Artificial Intelligence, ultimately propelling social and economic prosperity in the region. 

By combining a massive and targeted approach, with didactic content about the technology, we make AI appealable to students, companies and indirectly, lobby governments to support the spread of the technology. The prize will go to the development of our 2020 initiatives, which include events of massive scale, and workshops targeted to companies and students. Specifically, we will use the resources to finish developing the educational program with our partners, secure the sites for the events, generate massive media reach and hire the right people to ensure the effective execution of our initiatives.

Our ultimate goal is to position Latin America in the forefront of Artificial Intelligence research, adoption and practical usage. Our initiative seeks to empower 600 million people in Latin America that are not even aware of the existence of AI and its applications, inform them and inspire them to pursue a career driven by AI, and provide them with the tools to develop and use Artificial Intelligence, ultimately propelling social and economic prosperity in the region.  We are confident that our sequential approach will , we are providing them with an opportunity for social mobility through better professional career path.

By combining a social experience, like stadiums, with didactic content about the technology, we make AI appealable to the student population. The prize will go to the development of the stadium initiative and we will use the resources to finish developing the educational program with our partners, secure the stadiums and ensure an effective execution of the synchronized events.