GNOSS is a company located in Logroño, and a pioneer in the construction of semantic or data websites. He has more than 12 years of experience in this field, builds and exploits knowledge graphs applying cognitive technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). The process is aimed at the construction of knowledge platforms that function as ontological representation models that can be interrogated by machines and people. In this way, any topic can be investigated in depth more easily, intuitively, contextually and semantically.
“Note. There are two things to note first. The first is that love must be put more into deeds than in words ”. This text, from the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, is one of the best known of the founder of the Jesuit order. Now, each term or concept used and developed in the saint’s writings can be consulted in digital format through the Ignatian Word Reference ( Ignatian Dictionary ), an initiative of the Jesuit order to update and update the thinking of Saint Ignatius, facilitating a tool that allows its translation into different languages.
In this first version, the dictionary will make 300 terms available in 9 languages, which will amount to more than a thousand in the coming months. The project is designed so that it is the Jesuit community as a whole that contributes to its construction and to the preservation and dissemination of the legacy of Ignacio de Loyola.
The technological base of the project is the cognitive intelligence engine created by the Riojan company GNOSS, which allows linking in a questionable knowledge graph the set of bibliographic materials associated with the teachings within the texts of San Ignacio de Loyola, as well as their translations to different languages.
For the CEO of GNOSS, Ricardo Alonso Maturana, “this project, the result of a methodical effort to identify, extract and classify Ignatian terms carried out by a team of theologians from the Society of Jesus, will make Ignatian knowledge a more scalable asset , more simply classifiable and easy to associate between the terms so that each search is more enriching, more contextual and, finally, makes more sense ”.
The release version of the dictionary was presented on Thursday July 12 at the main campus of the University of Deusto during the Conference of Rectors of the Jesuit Universities, in Bilbao. It has 300 terms extracted from the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and they are enriched with original terms from manuscripts; references associated with the original texts of the Spiritual Exercises; translation into nine languages (Spanish, English, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Basque, Mandarin and Latin); and contextual classifications of each concept.
The dictionary is designed to evolve and will be updated in blocks of 100 concepts periodically until all the texts of the saint are completed since the Jesuit order was created in 1540 and that include, in addition to the Spiritual Exercises, the constitutions of the company, the correspondence of Ignacio de Loyola and the minutes of the 35 congregations.
Although it was not revealed in the presentation of the project, having carried out this initiative without technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence would probably have taken several years, if not decades. A clear example is the Ignatian Dictionary, of how a multitude of data and images, with good processing capacity and cutting-edge technologies such as AI can solve problems and advance projects that until recently could seem unthinkable.
