Argentine President Javier Milei has plans to turn his country, which has one of the lowest rates of artificial intelligence (AI) use on the continent, into a world leader in the field.
The South American country is uniquely placed to become a global AI hub, with abundant electricity capacity and a highly skilled workforce, he says.
“We have everything, everything, to become an AI powerhouse,” Milei said recently. “We have the human resources. You have no idea how many kids are coding here.”
Photo: AFP
The country also has the reliable energy required by data centers, he said.
To turn his vision into reality, the self-described “anarcho-capitalist” is counting on deregulation to attract foreign capital.
The country needs such investment; it has been battling bleak poverty levels and chronic inflation.
Milei, who has met with tech bosses such as Meta Platforms Inc CEO Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk during US visits, portrays Argentina to potential investors as “practically the last truly liberal country in the world,” Argentine AI Society president Alexander Ditzend said.
In Milei’s bid to attract foreign money, he managed to pass a law through Argentine parliament in June dubbed Promotional Regime for Large Investment — his first major legislative win since taking power.
The law offers tax, customs and exchange-control benefits for investments longer than 30 years exceeding US$200 million.
However, since taking office in December last year, Milei has also cut public funding for everything from soup kitchens to the arts, as he seeks to slash Argentina’s budget deficit.
“Argentina needs it [AI] if it wants to be more competitive and not be left behind,” said Tomas Porchetto, an Argentine living in the US and founder of Constana, an AI-based platform for information technology teaching.
The country has a long way to go.
A study in July by Randstad, a Netherlands-based human resources firm, found that about 13 percent of Argentine use AI regularly in their work, half the Latin American average and lower than North America and Asia.
And a report by The Conference Board, a nonprofit business think tank based in New York, last year found that just more than one in 10 Argentine companies used AI in their operations — half the global average.
While some fear it might be too late for Argentina to catch up, others worry it might go overboard in its embrace of AI technology.
Last month, the Argentine government in Buenos Aires announced it would develop an AI-based system intended to prevent crimes using predictions based on analysis of historical data.
Rights group Amnesty International has warned of the risk of “algorithmic bias” leading to discrimination against certain groups of people or neighborhoods.
Such a system could “increase inequality” in an already fractured society, and cause “self-censorship ... by people who know, or have a well-founded suspicion of being under surveillance,” the NGO’s Argentina director Mariela Belski said.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS