Carlos Alzate

Sr. AI Advisor & General Manager, Colombia

As Senior AI Advisor, Carlos assists portfolio companies develop their ML technology and counsels them on the current state of the art. In his role as General Manager for the Fund’s AI hub in Colombia, he oversees the Fund’s LatAm technical talent and assists portfolio companies with hiring ML talent.

“An AI startup needs a clear way to productize ML technology. We can build cutting-edge AI, but the challenge is how to leverage this in a production setting with a business goal in mind.”

A seasoned AI/ML researcher, Carlos’ work has taken him around the world, including leading a research group at IBM Research in Ireland and postdoctoral research in unsupervised and semi-supervised machine learning in Belgium. At IBM, Carlos led a team working on Project Debater, an AI system designed to debate live with expert human debaters. Building on the success of Watson—the IBM AI project that competed on Jeopardy!—Project Debater was designed to participate in live debates with expert human debaters.

“A side effect of working with a machine that is able to debate, is I spend a lot of time considering the pros and cons of things, because that is what debate is,” says Carlos.

Carlos’ career in AI began as a student. “I fell in love with AI as an undergraduate and after that first exposure I decided, ‘this is what I want to do for a living,’” he continues.

Carlos channeled that interest into a Ph.D. and master’s degree in AI from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven). He also holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.