ORION Taking Responsible AI to the Heart of Latin American Industry

On 26 and 27 March 2026, the Country Club Lima Hotel in Lima, Peru, hosted the CIIT Latam Congress 2026, a premier international gathering at the intersection of digital transformation and the primary industrial sectors. Now in its seventh edition, the congress has established itself as a platform connecting companies, specialists, and leaders to drive technological transformation across the region’s most critical industries. The event drew a predominantly industry-heavy crowd, with C-suite executives and lead engineers from major mining companies and suppliers, alongside an academic presence from regional technical universities that created a vital bridge between theoretical research and field implementation. ORION was represented at this landmark gathering by Prof. Petr Musilek of the University of Alberta, who delivered a keynote address titled The AI Nexus: Integrating Responsible Intelligence Across Energy, Mining, and Digital Core.

For Prof. Musilek, the decision to attend was driven by the clear convergence between the congress’s themes and ORION’s core mission, seeing it as a prime opportunity to make the case that Responsible AI is not simply an ethical consideration but a functional necessity for the future of these sectors. He described the atmosphere across the two days as one of high-stakes innovation, where the conversation among delegates had moved well beyond the question of whether to adopt digital technologies, with the focus firmly on how to integrate new tools efficiently, securely, and sustainably into traditional industrial workflows.

At the heart of Prof. Musilek’s presentation was the concept of the “Digital Core” and the move away from siloed, disconnected data towards integrated intelligent systems capable of managing everything from energy consumption to mineral extraction in a unified way. His talk explored the technical architecture required to make AI genuinely responsible in high-stakes industrial contexts, with a focus on three pillars: transparency, safety, and human-in-the-loop systems. The key messages he brought to the audience were deliberately grounding ones. “AI is a tool, not a strategy,” he emphasises. “Technology must serve the strategic goals of safety and sustainability.” The “Nexus” of his title refers to the seamless connection between a physical asset and the digital intelligence managing it, and in sectors like energy and mining, he argued, an ethical AI framework is not a compliance exercise but is synonymous with operational reliability.

The themes of the keynote were a direct extension of ORION’s own work. Prof. Musilek drew explicitly on the project’s commitment to digital innovation within rigorous environmental and social governance frameworks, and referenced ORION’s research into decentralised energy and intelligent grid management as a real-world proof of concept for the ideas presented on stage. In post-keynote networking, he cited ORION’s specific projects to illustrate how the concepts discussed could be tested in practice. The project and the University of Alberta both attracted considerable interest, with many industry leaders already familiar with the University of Alberta’s standing as a global leader in energy and AI, as well as its highly regarded Mining Engineering programme.

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the event was the ground-truth feedback that only comes from direct dialogue with practitioners. Conversations with mining operators about the harsh environmental realities of deploying AI sensors in the field served as a timely reminder that digital models must be as robust as the machinery they are designed to support.

Prof. Musilek returned from Lima with three reflections that resonate strongly with the project’s direction. First, the challenges of the energy transition are genuinely global, with Latin America navigating the same digital transformation pressures as Canada, Europe, and beyond, which underscores both the universality of ORION’s research questions and the value of international visibility. Second, despite the pervasive focus on AI and automation, the “Social Licence to Operate”, meaning the trust and acceptance of local communities and workforces, remains the most critical factor for industrial success, a principle that sits at the core of responsible innovation. Third, and most encouragingly for a Horizon Europe project, there is a strong and growing appetite among South American industry stakeholders for partnerships that link global research institutions with regional resource expertise. As Prof. Musilek puts it: “Bringing projects like ORION into industry-focused congresses prevents innovation silos. Industry often focuses on short-term ROI, while research looks at long-term resilience. Ensuring that the next generation of industrial technology is built on rigorous evidence and ethical frameworks, rather than just commercial drive, is exactly what these moments of dialogue are for.”

For ORION, participation in events like this is not just about visibility. It is about ensuring that the research being done finds its way into the hands of the people who need it most, out in the field, where the real work of the energy transition happens.