Argentina’s President Javier Millay has plans to turn his country, which has one of the lowest rates of artificial intelligence (AI) use on the continent, into a global leader in the field.
The South American country is uniquely positioned to become a global AI hub, he argues, with abundant electricity capacity and a highly skilled workforce.
“We have everything, everything, to become an AI powerhouse,” Milei said recently.
“We have the manpower. You have no idea how many kids are coding here.”
The country also has the reliable power needed by data centers, the president argues.
To turn his vision into reality, the self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalist” is counting on deregulation to attract foreign capital.
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The country needs such investments. struggles with grim levels of poverty and chronic inflation.
Milei, who has met with tech bosses such as Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk during visits to the US, portrays Argentina to potential investors as “practically the last truly liberal country in the world,” said Alexander Ditzend, president of Argentine AI Society.
In Miley’s bid to attract foreign money, he managed to pass a law through parliament in June called RIGI, or the Promotion Regime for Large Investments — his first major legislative victory since taking office.
The law offers tax, customs and exchange benefits for 30 years for investments exceeding $200 million.
But since taking office last December, Milei has also cut public funding for everything from cuisines to the arts as he seeks to reduce Argentina’s budget deficit.
“Algorithmic Bias”
“Argentina needs it (AI) if it wants to be more competitive and not fall behind,” said Tomas Porchetto, an Argentine living in the US and founder of Constana, an AI-based platform for teaching information technology.
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The country has a long way to go.
A study in July by Randstad, a Netherlands-based human resources firm, found that just 13 percent of Argentines use artificial intelligence regularly at work, half the Latin American average and lower than North America and Asia.
And a report by The Conference Board, a New York-based nonprofit business think tank, found last year that just over one in ten Argentine companies used artificial intelligence in their operations — half the global average.
While some fear it may be too late for Argentina to catch up, others worry it may go overboard in the embrace of AI technology.
Last month, the government in Buenos Aires announced that it will develop an artificial intelligence-based system to prevent crimes using predictions based on historical data analysis.
Rights group Amnesty International has warned of the risk of “algorithmic bias” leading to discrimination against certain groups of people or neighbourhoods.
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Such a system could “increase inequality” in an already fractured society and cause “self-censorship… by people who know or have reasonable suspicion that they are under surveillance,” the NGO’s Argentina director, Mariela Belsky, told AFP. .
Source: AFP