KHIPU 2025 was the Latin American artificial intelligence festival.

The city of Santiago, Chile hosted the conference for the first time. KHIPU 2025, the most important artificial intelligence conference in Latin America, which took place from March 10 to 14, 2025. This event brought together more than 500 attendees from academia, industry, and other leaders in the field, becoming a crucial platform for research on artificial intelligence in Chile and the region.

"Having you all here is like seeing a dream come true," he said. Jocelyn Dunstan Escudero, local chair of KHIPU 2025. Researcher at the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data academic at the Department of Computer Science and the Institute of Mathematical and Computational Engineering from the Catholic University of Chile welcomed more than 300 participants on Monday morning. 



During the inauguration, the dean of the Faculty of Administration and Economics, Catholic University, the venue where the first four days of the event took place, José Miguel Sánchez, highlighted the importance of KHIPU as a space for the exchange of ideas and international collaboration. "AI is reshaping the global landscape, and its role in the economy and business is more crucial than ever. As People, it is our responsibility to leverage this powerful tool to promote the well-being and progress of all," he said.

"AI has the potential to significantly improve lives and boost business prosperity. However, solving such a complex challenge requires diverse perspectives and the brightest minds from every corner of the world. This conference aims to empower Latin Americans to become leaders in the field of artificial intelligence," said the Vice-Rector for Research at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Pedro Bouchon, who also highlighted the role of the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data on the organization of KHIPU and the role that research centers play in coordinating multidisciplinary work: "The researchers who make up the institutes and centers have the ability to understand the complexity of data, extract its value, and transform it for the benefit of society. In a world where AI is advancing rapidly, their work is more important than ever." 

The Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data, next to the Catholic University of Chile, were the local host organizations KHIPU 2025 in Chile. "Hosting KHIPU 2025 in Santiago gave us a unique opportunity to promote the role of research conducted in Chile in the field of artificial intelligence and data science, with a key focus on broad and diverse participation, aligning with the mission of using research in this area to improve the quality of life in Latin America," he highlights. Paula Monica Silva, Communications Coordinator for the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data and local co-chair of KHIPU 2025.

Of the 250 students selected from 900 applicants, around 130 presented their research in academic posters, with the aim of sharing and exchanging knowledge with their peers, organizers, sponsors, and speakers participating in the event. The participants, who came to Santiago from different parts of Latin America, from Mexico to southern Argentina and Chile, were provided with local public transportation and a large number of accommodation scholarships. 

An event with gender parity

"49.8% of KHIPU participants are not men," explained Enzo Ferrante, one of the international organizers and an academic at the University of Buenos Aires, at the close of the activities. "We know we have a critical diversity problem in our community, but we are trying to address it by creating opportunities for minorities here: because here we are all minorities, we are all Latinx. Our main goal is to create opportunities for young students," he said.

KHIPU 2025's main objective was to offer training in advanced machine learning topics, such as deep learning and reinforcement learning. It also sought to strengthen the machine learning community in Latin America through collaboration between researchers and the creation of opportunities to exchange knowledge with the international community. The event also sought to raise awareness of how artificial intelligence can be used to benefit the region.

Challenging learning pace: Master classes, practical sessions, and parallel sessions

The first master class session was led by former IMFD researcher Jorge Pérez, co-founder of Cero.ai, who presented the basics and fundamentals of machine learning and deep learning to the audience. During the conference, spotlights were presented by each participating country: Chile's representative was Rodrigo Verschae, who presented the advances in Computer Vision research at the RIS Lab of the University of O'Higgins.

During its first four days, the conference featured more than 40 talks, nine practical sessions, ten Spotlight presentations, sponsor presentations, and two panels on "Research in academia and industry" and "Start-ups," in a demanding schedule that began at 9:00 a.m. and ended after 7:00 p.m. with the practical sessions. 



One of the nine parallel sessions held on Thursday focused on Human Rights and Artificial Intelligence, in which the director of the IMFD, Juan, presented the progress made on the project Our Memory, alongside projects from Mexico (Victor Mireles), Argentina (Leandro Lombardi, QuantlT), Uruguay (Aiala Rosá, UdelaR). 

"Being able to share what we are doing in the area, see the needs we share and also how our work differs, allows us to strengthen our projects," said Juan , director of the IMFD.

The last of the master classes of the first four days was given by IMFD researcher Bárbara Poblete (Amazon/University of Chile), with "Decoding Online Social Signals: From Academia to Industry," a talk in which she presented the work done with social media data and the applications she is currently working on, focused on the market.

The presence of the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art

KHIPU takes its name from the Inca Empire's data recording system: quipus have been analyzed and studied as an elaborate way of recording information, both numerical and narrative. In the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art one of the largest preserved examples can be found. The textile researcher María Patricia (Icha) RomeroShe held a workshop highlighting this advanced technology and taught more than 300 participants how to make a simple record using strings to mark a date. "Thank you very much for inviting me. I always do this course on a small scale, so this is very new, and I am very happy to have so many people interested in learning," she said. 





The closure of the National Institute Extension Center – CEINA

On Friday, KHIPU's goal was to open its audience to the entire artificial intelligence community in Santiago and Chile. That is why the activities were moved to the National Institute Extension Center, CEINA, which was attended by over 500 People. 

Women in AI

"A key aspect of diversity, beyond geography, is gender. We know that less than 27% of the AI workforce are women, and this has proven problematic due to the unfair distribution of risks and benefits of AI," he noted. Claudia López, academic at the Federico Santa María Technical University and researcher at  CENIA and FAIR, at the start of Women in AI, which featured the participation of Catherine D’Ignazio, author of the book Data Feminism and Ivana Feldfeber, from Data Gender.

During the event, the speakers presented the various challenges posed by the gender gap in the field of artificial intelligence, and also highlighted the excellent results that can be achieved by adopting a gender and diversity approach in the work and teams in this area. 

After the presentations, the Headquarters of the University of Chile the mentoring lunch for KHIPU 2025 participants, which was supported by Women in Machine Learning (WiML) and the organization of Violet Chang, academic at the University of Santiagoo, which addressed the main challenges faced by women working in highly male-dominated environments and strategies for overcoming them. 


Closing Event: Academia and Industry 

With an interactive and outstanding presentation on the work being done at the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data the project Our Memory, led by the DCC UC academic and IMFD researcher, Sunday Mery, the presentations for the Closing Event began. 

Paola Bermolen, from the University of the Republic of Uruguayshared his work on graphs and the possibility of reproducing real networks, with an approach that helps analyze existing networks and create new networks that share the same key characteristics as real ones. 

The challenges involved in managing the large amounts of information generated in astronomy is the issue that seeks to be solved. Larch, the astronomical broker that, led from Chile, seeks to extract relevant astrophysical information from the enormous flow of astronomical information generated by the new generation of telescopes and digital cameras, and which was presented by Francisco Forster, director of the Millennium Institute Astrophysics MAS, to close the first block of the day. 

In the panel on Governance in Artificial Intelligence, coordinated by Beatriz Busanich (Via Libre Foundation, Argentina) Ignacio Silva Santa Cruz, from the Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge, and Innovation, Chile; Marina Bericua, from Microsoft; Luca Belli of the Getulio Vargas Foundation, Brazil, and  Juan Lara, Digital Rights, in an interesting debate on the challenges faced People in the field of AI, which reaffirmed the Montevideo Commitment, which seeks to promote developments in artificial intelligence with a focus on our region, in order to position it globally. 


In the second block, he presented Jeff Dean, chief scientist at Google Research and Google DeepMind, on important trends in AI: how we got here, what we can do, and how we can shape the future of artificial intelligence. The presentation of Joelle Pineau, from Goal: "A culture of open science, in the era of large foundational AI models, focused on innovation in the field and advances in the state of the art through open research for the benefit of all.

The closing ceremony was led by the Chilean René Vidal, professor of University of Pennsylvania and Director of the Center for Innovation in Data Engineering and Science (IDEAS) in the US, where he gave a presentation on the importance of trust in Artificial Intelligence in medicine and the advances being made in this area, with a special focus on trust and security. 



Sponsors and organizations 

Finally, special recognition was given to the conference sponsors, thanks to whom this activity is free of charge for team participants, as the funds raised are used to finance the travel, accommodation, and meals of the selected participants. At KHIPU 2025, the Hopper Dean Foundation and Apple participated as sponsors. Google DeepMind, Microsoft, ACHS, Mistral AI, Cohere, ArionKoder, AMD, Anyone AI, AC3E, Zero.ai, BMI UC, the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, Tryo Labs and the Master's Degree in Artificial Intelligence, PUC. 

Added to this was the contribution made by the Strategic Partners: the National Institute Extension Center, CEINA, NAACL, the UC School of Economics and Administration, RIIA Latin America, the Concha y Toro Vineyard Research and Innovation Center, LXAI, WiML, CENIA, the Museum of Pre-Columbian Art, INRIA Chile and the University of Chile. 

"We managed to hold a large-scale event, in which the AI community from all over Latin America came together to learn, share, and make progress on the challenges facing our region, with all the contributions we can make from our countries and the need we have to forge links between researchers in the region," said the local chair of the event. Jocelyn Dunstan"KHIPU 2025 was a milestone in promoting artificial intelligence in Latin America, providing a space for knowledge exchange and collaboration between regional and international leaders," added the researcher.