Institute of Computational Intelligence (IIC)
The Institute of Computational Intelligence (ICI) is the Artificial Intelligence research group at the Universidad Privada de Bolivia (UPB). At the ICI, we investigate and apply deep learning models and knowledge graphs to build business solutions, including data analysis platforms and conversational assistants in Spanish. The institute works across a broad spectrum of research, including theoretical foundations, algorithms, prototypes, and industrial applications.
The ICI's vision is to put Bolivia on the map of Artificial Intelligence research and development by investigating, innovating, and applying cutting-edge AI technologies to solve real-world problems in Bolivia and Latin America.
The mission of ICI is to contribute to the long-term development of applied AI resources in Bolivia and Latin America, providing practical solutions to fundamental socio-economic and environmental challenges in Bolivia and Latin America. Therefore, our research and innovations aim to create a double impact: on the development of future AI experts and on the ability to apply these methods to real-world challenges. Thus, the ICI has three main missions:
- To research the different branches of Artificial Intelligence,
- To create innovative solutions to solve complex problems for businesses in Bolivia and Latin America.
- To transfer technology to both young Bolivian talents and companies.
September 2018 - Resolución Rectoral No. UPB-RR-05/2018
Knowledge Graphs for Enterprises
- Enterprises need scalable solutions to transform large volumes of raw and heterogeneous data into applicable knowledge. Knowledge graphs provide a semantic layer to encode and harmonize enterprise knowledge dispersed across myriad data sources. Increasingly, both academia and industry are investing in making Knowledge Graph technology easy to adopt in different knowledge management scenarios. At ICI, we research approaches and tools to build knowledge graphs, and innovate graph data analysis solutions for enterprises.
Spanish Conversational Cognitive Assistant
- The advancement of Natural Language Processing has dramatically increased, allowing us to have virtual assistants in our pockets (mobile applications). The need for conversational assistants to support our daily lives is going to increase in the coming years. However, most of the NLP work is done in English, limiting its applicability in developing countries such as Bolivia. ICI's research focuses on building state-of-the-art conversational agents in Spanish, including language models for understanding intentions and expressions, and question answering modules.
