Latam-GPT is new giant language mannequin being developed in and for Latin America. The undertaking, led by the nonprofit Chilean Nationwide Heart for Synthetic Intelligence (CENIA), goals to assist the area obtain technological independence by growing an open supply AI mannequin skilled on Latin American languages and contexts.
“This work can’t be undertaken by only one group or one nation in Latin America: It’s a problem that requires everybody’s participation,” says Álvaro Soto, director of CENIA, in an interview with WIRED en Español. “Latam-GPT is a undertaking that seeks to create an open, free, and, above all, collaborative AI mannequin. We’ve been working for 2 years with a really bottom-up course of, bringing collectively residents from totally different nations who wish to collaborate. Lately, it has additionally seen some extra top-down initiatives, with governments taking an curiosity and starting to take part within the undertaking.”
The undertaking stands out for its collaborative spirit. “We’re not trying to compete with OpenAI, DeepSeek, or Google. We would like a mannequin particular to Latin America and the Caribbean, conscious of the cultural necessities and challenges that this entails, resembling understanding totally different dialects, the area’s historical past, and distinctive cultural points,” explains Soto.
Because of 33 strategic partnerships with establishments in Latin America and the Caribbean, the undertaking has gathered a corpus of knowledge exceeding eight terabytes of textual content, the equal of hundreds of thousands of books. This info base has enabled the event of a language mannequin with 50 billion parameters, a scale that makes it akin to GPT-3.5 and offers it a medium to excessive capability to carry out advanced duties resembling reasoning, translation, and associations.
Latam-GPT is being skilled on a regional database that compiles info from 20 Latin American nations and Spain, with a formidable whole of two,645,500 paperwork. The distribution of knowledge reveals a big focus within the largest nations within the area, with Brazil the chief with 685,000 paperwork, adopted by Mexico with 385,000, Spain with 325,000, Colombia with 220,000, and Argentina with 210,000 paperwork. The numbers replicate the scale of those markets, their digital growth, and the supply of structured content material.
“Initially, we’ll launch a language mannequin. We anticipate its efficiency usually duties to be near that of enormous business fashions, however with superior efficiency in matters particular to Latin America. The thought is that, if we ask it about matters related to our area, its data might be a lot deeper,” Soto explains.
The primary mannequin is the start line for growing a household of extra superior applied sciences sooner or later, together with ones with picture and video, and for scaling as much as bigger fashions. “As that is an open undertaking, we would like different establishments to have the ability to use it. A gaggle in Colombia may adapt it for the college schooling system or one in Brazil may adapt it for the well being sector. The thought is to open the door for various organizations to generate particular fashions for specific areas like agriculture, tradition, and others,” explains the CENIA director.