Latin America's AI Crossroad

In this episode, we look past Silicon Valley to analyze what the global artificial intelligence revolution actually looks like on the ground in Latin America.  

Despite high smartphone penetration, Latin America faces a digital capital gap. The presenters unpack the critical question: will the region become an independent engine of digital innovation, or remain a traditional exporter of raw commodities?  

Key Highlights

• Resource Demands & Supply Chains: How Latin America’s abundance of critical minerals, water, and energy sources feeds the hungry AI infrastructure of global superpowers.  
• Real-World Applications: From solar-powered precision agriculture robots in Brazil to AI assistants bringing financial inclusion to Mexico's informal economy.  
• Bold Legal Experiments: Argentina’s move toward recognizing "non-human corporations" run by AI agents and attracting major tech investment.  
• Macro Risks & Workforce Impact: Addressing administrative job displacement, data center environmental pressures, and historical boom-and-bust economic cycles.  
• The 50-Year Horizon: Contrasting views on whether AGI or Super AI will rapidly overhaul human society or progress through slow, non-linear fits and starts.

Production: Sustainable LatAm

Presenters 

• Andrew Thompson - International journalist & political-risk analyst with deep LatAm coverage (OBG, EIU, Latin News; ex-Head BBC Learning English).
• Alberto Souviron - International journalist and digital comms leader for EM investors; ex BBC/Newsweek/Lloyd’s Register. 
• Julian Seydoux - AI-driven finance entrepreneur (FirmView AI, Fast Audit AI); ex-Moody’s/Consilium; cross-border EM & LatAm focus. 

Transcript

Teaser: AI, Job Losses, and Social Risks

Andrew Thompson 0:00

If we turn to look at some of the challenges and some of the not so wonderful things, one of the first ones is AI is going to have a major impact on employment. It's not totally clear, but a lot of people, particularly in admin type rules, could end up lending losing their jobs. Like all technologies, it has the capacity for abuse. We're all fully aware of how the social networks on the internet can be used to influence elections, distort reality, and promote fake news or even other forms of harm. So both those things exist at the same time side by side. And the question is looking at specific proposals and ideas and seeing what each of them does in the balance between harm and benefit to society.

Episode Introduction: The AI Revolution Beyond Silicon Valley

Alberto Souviron 1:04

Welcome back to Sustainable Latam, a podcast where we explore the intersection of innovation, economics, and sustainability across Latin America. I'm Alberto Sibiron, and as always, I'm joined by my co-hosts Andrew Thompson and Julian Sayto. Today we are tackling the biggest technological shift of our generation, artificial intelligence. But we aren't going to talk about Silicon Valley. That makes no sense if we're following Latin America, but we are talking about what the AI revolution actually looks like in the ground from Mexico to Patagonia. Our region, Latin America, is already incredibly connected. However, the region is facing a massive digital capital gap. So the question comes obviously: are we going to use AI to create a new class of highly productive digital citizens? Are we going to do a leapprof for our economies moving forward? Or are we just going to stay behind, depending on foreign models and just consuming but not innovating? Obviously, there are a lot of challenges for the region from supply chains, the creation of data centers, and the lack of water in certain countries, a lot of water in other and others. Infrastructure, lack of policies. There are a lot of challenges that we need to look at. But there's also a lot of opportunities behind.

Core Opportunities: AI Adoption and Precision Agriculture

Alberto Souviron 2:47

With that, I would begin probably with you, Andrew, that you have recently created a report around data centers in Latin America. And I will ask straightforward what are the main opportunities and the main challenges for the regions when we are talking about AI adoption?

Andrew Thompson 3:05

I think in AI adoption, if we start by the opportunities, here is a technology which allows machines to do what humans do in some contexts, but much faster and more efficiently. So all sorts of basic processing work can now be done by AI assistants. And it doesn't end the role of humans, but it, if you like, gives additional techniques and things that can be done. To give you an example, there's an AI robot in Brazil that does precision agriculture that goes around identifying weeds in the fields while powered from solar panels on its back. And it does a job that would normally be done by farmers faster and more efficiently. One of the first ones is AI is going to have a major impact on employment. It's not totally clear, but a lot of people, particularly in admin type rules, could end up lending losing their jobs. Like all technologies, it has the capacity for abuse. We're all fully aware of how the social networks on the internet can be used to influence elections, distort reality, and promote fake news or even other forms of harm. So both those things exist at the same time side by side. And the question is looking at specific proposals and ideas and seeing what each of them does in the balance between harm and benefit to society.

Alberto Souviron 4:47

Thanks, Andrew. That's a good approach in terms of the grief and opportunities.

The AI Supply Chain: Latin America's Resources and Global Demand

Alberto Souviron 4:53

Let's talk a little bit in terms of supply chains. Julian, you are well-versing in that area. So when you see AI in Latin America, what do you see? I see money.

Julian Seydoux 5:04

I see you, I see dollar bills floating around. And R and Bs probably and perhaps Euros too. I think there is I think AI is a massive opportunity for Latin American countries. And uh this is effectively driven by the more advanced economies and the AI demands from whether it's from the US or China and whoever wants to compete and follow suit. So in order to do that, there's a huge demand of it's not like a traditional software where you just needed you can replicate and something is appears in the cloud and then you can just scale it up easily. AI needs uh I was looking I was watching some some interview by I think the head of commodities of Goldman Sachs or someone, and I think he was right in pointing out that at the end of the day AI is really the commodity driven. Right at the beginning of the supply chain, you need you need natural resources. And and that means that you need a lot of it, especially if you're going to an AI-driven economy in the States, but also in Latin America and anywhere. So much so that there's not enough at this present moment. And my take of the new Trump row doctrine I don't know if it's called this anymore, but the the of across Latam is really driven by the need for the need for energy, the need for rare earth minerals, resources of all kinds, all types of minerals. We're talking about lithium, copper, anything that can that is part of the AI supply chain, of which the continent, the sub southern continent is full of. And this is really this is basically you have a really hungry neighbor for all of this. And if I just take one additional point, is which is a really strong signal in my view,

Argentina’s Legal Experiment: Allowing "Non-Human" Corporations

Julian Seydoux 7:30

is that there was an article by the FT mentioning that uh the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel had recently moved to Buenos Aires and Argentina, who has a with me lay very libertarian leader, has recently been changing some of the laws also to from what we understand uh first of its kind allowing non-human corporations. That's basically legal entities that are run by agents.

Alberto Souviron 8:11

Yeah, it it's incredible on all that, but let me interrupt you. Two things that could be controversial, and I would like to have your reply for both of you. There's no doubt that the region is incredibly rich in terms of natural resources, especially water, critical minerals, rare minerals. We're talking about 15 to 20 percent, if not more, of resources that the AI economy is using are going to use. But here is the question: Is Latin America destined to just supply these critical minerals or can begin to work a little bit and use these resources also to become more independent, to what we say, or more productive? We cannot forget that one of the key elements of the AI economy is that can increase productivity a lot in any country, and the most advanced economies are looking for that. So we have to ask ourselves the region has a massive opportunity to probably supply this trend, but also take advantage of it and produce something around and not don't just become a supplier of uh commodities.

The Productivity Debate vs. the Cost of Job Displacements

Julian Seydoux 9:26

Um I'm not quite sure about this uh productivity mantra that is mentioned everywhere. So yes, uh so I run AI-driven companies and yes, uh in my field, so we produce financial research on companies. And in that field, uh long time ago, when I was working for a large blue chip corporation uh rating agency in Europe, and you would cover about 20 names to and the US would be covering 40 names per analyst, which meant that the US was double simply because everything was all the data was more integrated and GPT would receive more data uh immediately. Today, with what I'm doing, I'm covering about 600 to 800 firms, and I would feel just as comfortable today about my 600 firms as I was with my 20 or so a long time ago. So there is a gain of productivity here, but there's also a huge loss for the need of people, and I think that's what some of the economies which are more advanced in AI or completely launching into that will have to start facing is to what extent do you need do you need people for certain activities? And it will come. I think most businesses at this stage will have to grasp about what do they actually need, how they will uh interact, what's the what are the new workflows, the new processes driven by AI, what does this mean? Is my output as a say financial research better than say lots of humans doing the same work? Is it a different way? So everyone has got its has got its place, but then it's an then it's also a question of economics about the cost of production, uh say a financial research. So financial research for me costs uh very little compared to say a bunch of investment bankers analysts who would be analyzing a company and taking a lot of time and doing a great job, whatever they're doing, of course, but it's just a simple matter of cost at some stage. And what does it mean as you start competing in the market? And it goes across to all types of industries and all types of things. And this is why you feel that the move from Peter Thiel to go down to Argentina at the same time as this non-aging, non-corporation of of or non-human corporation uh comes uh uh along is really is really one to watch. I would come back to but I'd but right now, right before I go into this, I just want to step back

Energy into Intelligence: The Real Cost of Building Data Centers

Julian Seydoux 12:17

because when we talk about supply chain, in order to build the AI the economy, you need so perhaps we need to understand what's what is what is AI. And so there was an interview by the Mistral, which is one of the European large language model CEO that was done recently, whereby he basically explains it, I think, uh very well he describes AI as the business of converting raw energy into intelligence. And so and so he basically says that electricity feeds into the data centers and then generate tok tokens which are which are then used for basically the power is turning to a code that is a form of intelligence that can be deployed and workflows and everything. But so if I cut the if I cut the this in two halves, there's one point, this one aspect, which is about all the energy that has to go into these huge infrastructures in order to turn this into intelligence. And then the other half is all about what do you do with intelligence or the production of that tokens and that can disrupt entire industries and everything that goes with it. I think we're still at the first the first uh half, which is about building these data centers, as Angul was mentioning, building the infrastructure, getting the energy into these data centers. And by some reports, it was saying that the US needs about 100 gigawatts of additional energy. We were far from it at the moment. So but in order to do this, you need a lot of raw natural resources, you need the energy, you need the petrol, you need the oil, you need to, which for me explains a lot of what the US is currently doing at the moment on the at the geopolitical level, if they want to compete with, say, China or whoever. And but that's also on the positive side for Latin America, which is rich in all of these aspects, is that all of this translates into dollars because you need to acquire, you need to buy, and you need to effectively transfer monetary value in order to get access to these uh to these to these assets. And that's a massive opportunity, especially if you have competing powers who are uh who are trying to buy the same thing, because there's not an infinite amount of all these resources at present. And maybe I put it out there, this is speculative, but maybe what is SpaceX and what Elon Musk is trying, which he's alluded before, was if there's a finite num amount of resources in on earth, then you need to get it from elsewhere. And there's talks about meteorites and how to access lots of these rare earth minerals or what else from meteorites, which may be the future, but that was Jeff Bezos, by the way.

Andrew Thompson 15:16

I just wanted sorry, I would I want to go back to the question that you raised, Alberto, which I think was about extractivism. How can Latin America protect itself from just producing the water, the power, the minerals that go north, and they only see a f small share of value added? And my suggestion would be it depends very much on the industry and the way um those industries are being set up. If you look specifically at Brazil, there have been talks with the US, with the Trump presidency, on the US gaining access to raw earth rare earth materials from Brazil, which has them in some plenty. The issue, however, is that they all need quite sophisticated refining processes and extraction from more general laws, and that probably gives the US an upper hand. Brazil will struggle to get a lot of the refining done within Brazil. But if you jump into a completely different industry, if you look at defense, Brazil recently took delivery of the first gripping jet fighter under a very big contract with Sweden, which was negotiated about 20 years ago or so. And there is, I think the total production is 36 fighters, of which 10, by the agreement signed by President Lula when in an earlier presidency, those 10 are being produced in Brazil. So there is some scope for trying to keep value added in the country of origin, but it depends very much on the industry, and sometimes they just the state of the industry is not favorable. Like, for example, Latin American countries have yet to build battery factors, factories, because it's makes a bit more economic sense to do it close to the point of car assembly.

Julian Seydoux 17:12

Absolutely. So I would say I'd add to that, which is I think is a very valid point. But the model that you just described is exactly what China did for many years, the transfer of knowledge into the shores. The other point I would make here is that when you have when you have ChatGPT or whatever it is, whatever large language model that exists, actually the access to intelligence and to produce some of these, you know longer the case, it's not so much the case that you need specific knowledge from a country that they have and control the IP, or very hard for a country to just to just say uh impede something which now is actually quite common. So if we take the battery, for instance, they just described. Actually the knowledge is probably out there already somewhere. It's just a question of people grabbing it and just making something of it. And so, in order to turn that into say a proper battery manufacturer, uh, it's not so much that you need people to fly in and to understand language and can set it up. You probably have some Brazilians that can do it or anywhere across Latin America. It's more the question that whether they have the sufficient investment to actually build it and build on top of it or build the same thing. And that's a and this is where the I think the opportunity lies fundamentally for Latin American countries, is because they have something or they have lots of things that everyone needs, and it's for the countries to be able to redistribute perhaps towards these area of value, higher value add, uh, so endeavors. But they don't need so much the talent from outside anymore, they just need the money to actually do it. So they can, this is why become trades becomes uh interesting with the with the various parties.

Alberto Souviron 18:56

I agree, I agree. Definitely uh as you say before, Julian, when we see AI, we can see dollar signs or or money or whatever. There is a huge opportunity. There are also risks as well. I I will try to I want to dig in two things.

Tackling the Informal Economy: AI for Financial Inclusion

Alberto Souviron 19:13

One is our socioeconomic reality in Latin America, a country that has a huge level of informality. And I make a question because I heard this several times that AI actually can help to overcome this problem of informality in the region, basically, by using AI on a law. Because when we're talking on informality, sometimes we're trying to we're thinking in an economy that is hiding around, but is highly productive sometimes. So maybe we can make a jump. And I'm asking, I see you, Andrew, that I are happy trying to answer that. So give you the mic in that area.

Andrew Thompson 19:56

Okay, there's a company in Mexico called Clip, and what it does is it uses AI assistants to have conversations with potential banking customers, and it's focusing those people who are known as the unbanked, people who are very much in the informal economy, and it is trying to prov how successful may be open to debate, but it is trying to present them with an easier way of talking and presenting information about information you have to give when you open a bank account, you go through forms after forms, and this system is being um made simpler and faster uh in an attempt to bridge the gap between the informal sector and the official, more formal sector of the economy. So I agree with you, the informal sector in many Latin American economies is 40-50% of the economy, and in some cases it's even higher. So if new technology can be used to bridge that gap and be more financially inclusive, there is a possibility it's a win potential win-win solution where the customers get access to social services, health and education better than before. The government gets more tax revenue, and the overall effects is positive.

Alberto Souviron 21:25

These are the opportunities. Obviously, there are challenges as well. You mentioned just earlier, Andrew, there are that there are some side effects that we're seeing, especially in terms of unemployment. We discussed in a previous episode when we're talking about Central America, the impact that the adoption of AI is having on just countries like Guatemala, for example, who has a huge industry based on the attention centers that they provide to developing countries are going to disappear because AI is basically. Replaces in all of this. And this is just one example, it's coming around. So with opportunities coming risk as well. But I would say that probably we have to question ourselves how ready is the regions to make this transition from one side to another, because probably that is going to be the key element. And probably a lot of legislation is going to need. I think Julian, you mentioned really well is it's going to depend a lot of the same states to distribute the opportunities that AI is providing. And probably the big opportunity is that this money is going to come inside the countries and can help do the leap forward. But obviously there are challenges. I would like to throw another element, something that you mentioned, Julian, and is our friend Millet and his proposal of the AI corporation, that's non-human corporations. There were some response from intellectuals across the world with coming from Martin Wolf on DFT, but a historian Hariri, who was talking about the risks of just allowing this. So I would like to dig a little bit deeper, and I will go with you, Julian. How do you see this is something that could be a massive opportunity or is something credible? And what risk do you see some of this? Probably what will be needed.

Julian Seydoux 23:27

Well, the I think this is where uh there's a there's a huge risks linked to artificial intelligence across the board for all countries, for everyone, and we don't really know what it is now. At the same time, there's a huge opportunity, which actually, interestingly enough, seems to be more the opportunity is now. So for instance, if uh I imagine that if you wanted to if you're operating in at the forefront of AR and you want to have agents and set up businesses or whatever, going to Argentina right now and setting up there is probably uh not a bad idea, especially if you think that uh Argentina has pretty much everything right there at his at its doorsteps. So if you talk about data centers, you can probably build in Patagonia having the cooling effect, you have the energy from the north or from the from the vacuum huerte or for whatever, you have lithium a bit further up, and you have resources across the board. Uh, if you need extra talent, you have lots of agri lots of uh agribusinesses that can feed you. So it's not a bad place to for talent to be, and for of course, between now and and then is huge investments that need to be done to link the entire countries and to do lots of things at some stage. But who says that it cannot be possible? But the opportunity is there for the country because that may attract huge amounts of investments by itself, and therefore there will be uh some value going to going to the local populations and promoting economic growth. And if the if these non-AI or non-human corporations are more competitive than human corporations, then that will cause by itself huge problems for human-led corporations or human corporations across the world. And for and we live in a competitive world, and that's the key factor. It's about understanding what are the competitive things that would that can be done. And regulations can only help you up to a certain up to a certain extent, because if you manage under deregulation to create and we saw it all over the place, so regulations can help you to maybe protect your own economics of certain markets or certain industries for a certain amount of time. But uh at some stage, uh maybe everything is too costly versus a non-human corporations, uh or whatever. So you everything needs to be redesigned, which are which are huge long-term risks, whilst in the short term the opportunities for lots of people is like a gold rush, uh lots of people to get involved in whichever part of the supply chain, be it right at the beginning to right at the end, where you have products and services that are being developed uh thanks to the to this uh intelligence that has been transferred from energy into intelligence.

Andrew Thompson 26:22

I

The "LatAm Risk Premium": Macroeconomic Volatility & Foreign Investment

Andrew Thompson 26:23

I'd like to jump in with a very dark response. And I think go ahead, Adrian. My Argentine friends will forgive me. I think one of the this is a problem now and has been a problem in the past, whenever Argentina discovers great riches, it then enters a period of political instability and the culture of get rich quick uh leads to major macroeconomic problems. So I fear that if Argentina has something like $20 billion being invested in back, I'm the with uh something like $20, $25 billion being invested in a data center in Patagonia, lithium, and so on, that the actual management of the macroecon economy may not be up to speed and able to cope with large inflows of money. And in fact, if you look at Argentina his history of the last five decades, it's all been about mini booms followed by awful disastrous recessions, and you'd want in a AI new world to have boom, but not to have the associated recession.

Julian Seydoux 27:35

I think that's the massive that's there's there's uh there's a lot of risk premium uh across uh all countries, and that's of course something that may be high up in the mind. But at the same time, you have to remember Peter Tillers moved there. Uh I think there were talks about Elon Musk having bought so having some presence in the Litim area at some stage. The the Americans or Skedus Pessant basically forced, or I don't know if you forced, but brought together a huge number of parties to to help with the with a credit line, the the Millet government. Um so there's a range of things that uh seem to imply that there's a there's already it's no longer only dependent on the local on the locals. There's interference, positive or negative, video views, whatever, but from the outside already with the with the eye for this. And you could argue you have the same thing across many other countries. We know that the US government is really implicated in all of these little things. They're making investments into smaller entities that are we saw that they made uh so announced uh an investment into I can't remember the name of this big blue chip firm, Intel, or whatever it was in the or in the States that suddenly saw its share price rise exponentially, which I'm posting on somewhere that this is this is what I did, in a good investment. But it's a much more proactive government across what it does um than say previously. So I think these absolutely these these are the challenges, and of course, because you are um if you hold lots of resources, other powers may not want you to be to we see it everywhere, may not want you to have the stronghold of all the resources uh of a particular type. And this is where China comes in, you have geopolitical interference, maybe the EU decides to wake up and starts and starts uh acting also in a more aggressive manner than it has done previously. So there's this range of things that that are negative connotation, which are also which we all know have happened in the past for commodity-driven countries, whether it's depending on oil and gas or all these things, it just it just has happened. The difference with AI is, however, a bit more significant because it's really something that, as I mentioned before, you know it's you don't you no longer so technology of AI, intelligence is available for everyone with a with a with a smartphone. You can download, you can have intelligence in your smartphone today. So no wonder, and you can see this hunger for intelligence across Latin America since they did download something like 15% of all global downloads for LLMs are done in Latin America. And uh so there's a lot lot of people are doing it, people are learning or becoming wiser, and as soon as they have it downloaded or even in front of them on a smartphone or the computers or whatever, then the the rapport of force between what you are doing and everyone else changes somewhat, uh which makes perhaps makes it more local uh for certain things. And things change radically across the board. But we'll come back to the initial point, which is at right at the beginning, these dollar value transfers from the people that have dollars to buy to buy to buy something, and that's the initial opportunity. The longer-term opportunities are full of challenges because of the risks that you are mentioning, Andrew, because of the risks that uh embedded with geopolitical aspects, because of all because of all these things and the disruptions that we'll have in every industry, which we cannot foresee

Policy & Regulation: AI Laws and the Threat of Brain Drain

Julian Seydoux 31:23

at the moment.

Alberto Souviron 31:23

I would jump there in because I think all that we're saying now at least in terms of risks and opportunities, which there's always come. But one element and has mentioned that he in a way what can make the difference here is if you have a good policy going around that, and each country in Latin America would need to think that from creation of regulations, laws, and everything. It's quite significant significant that of all the countries in Latin America, only Peru is the only country who has a full AI love to say that is completely approved, while Brazil and Mexico has advanced on it but is still not ful approved. It's interesting to see that well, that that's a general trend in the world because we don't know yet. But it's really interesting that in the region, especially Peru, Brazil, Mexico, are following the EU lead in terms of legislation to try to use AI. But here comes the question that this comes regulation once the other element is education. And I think the policies also will need to prevent the what we call a brain drain of Latin American engineers who end in just working for remotely for American companies instead of trying to be more productive or increase. And also this legislation, uh as we're saying, we will need to probably have the opportunity now to adapt in order to overcome old problems in the region like informality. In terms of finance, and Julian, you already mentioned that, and I think we all agree. Yeah, it can become a really real opportunity in terms of finance that helps the regions, but we are going to need probably a good uh policy development uh around. I give the mic to any of you to look at this and let me know. I if I am too optimist or too pessimist, so I can joke yeah. No, go ahead.

Julian Seydoux 33:34

No, I think you're absolutely right. Uh Alberto, there's uh there are some huge challenges just coming back, create data centers and all these things, is uh there's an ecological price. And the don't just Latin America is has is already fighting ecologically versus the versus the agribusinesses and so on to some extent. There's a there's uh there's the concern about the Amazon, uh the reduction of it, deforestation, and and so on. But going forward, you have water that is huge amounts of water that are needed. Um there's potential disruptions in not just not just about people's work, but also the general ecosystem that people live in. When you have when you start developing or start opening up these centers and further, for aging further for access to resources and so on. So I think there's uh there's a lot that needs to be put in place for fully gr capture all the value and minimize the uh some of the costs that are associated with the with a value capture.

Andrew Thompson 34:48

I think that I'm in favor of regulation, but it needs to be the right type. It needs to be relatively light. You don't want to create so many barriers to entry that you rule out innovation and small startup companies, which is what you need. The only other thing I'd say is there will be an AI uh scandal or crisis at some point in the near future, just as there'd been scandals or crises to do with the World Wide Web or uh or other things. And I think it'll be interesting because that will probably uh give the legislators and the countries you were mentioning Allerto, it will give them a bit of a kick up the backside to say you better get on and banalize proposals for a regulatory regime.

The 50-Year Forecast: Superintelligence or Stalled Progress?

Alberto Souviron 35:37

With this, I think we covered a lot, but uh I will go with something that you always go, uh Andrew. It says let's do a leap forward in time, 50 years from now. Where do you see Latin America in terms of AI from now to 50 years on? Julian.

Julian Seydoux 35:57

Oh no, please I want to begin with. Commentators are saying that some serious people who uh especially from the AI labs and so on, the forefront, say that within the next couple of years we'll have uh AGI, super intelligence on the planet, which will be and that and no one knows what happens after this. Is this concept of uh the singularity event, which is everything before this comes on board, and then after uh you don't you don't probably don't know at what stage you when you when you when you reach a tipping point to the other side, uh but you're already under control. And so in 50 years, if I go by just what people say, 50 years, we have no idea. I'll be I'll be surprised if in uh in 2026 in five years' time, I'll be lucky to understand exactly where we are. But having said that, uh in order to create this AGI or this competitive AIs, which I think is what's uh so my instinct is that actually competition even amongst AI is what will save us, is that we everyone's trying to create their own AI, and therefore we will be different AIs competing. And uh but that will come quite soon, and that will c in the initial disruptions for the economy that goes beyond this, where AI is taking over basically a lot of things, are quite significant. People talk about an universal uh whatever you call it, uh, payment for every workers because simply most of jobs would have been taken by AI, which is quite possible, from what we can see at this present day going in the future. Is there a possibility that exists? Possibly. There was a tweet which I saw which was relayed recently, which was relayed by Elon Musk about I think someone said uh one of the other Silicon Valley gurus saying there will be five million robots, and imagine well it'll be right now. Imagine well, we have when we have 10 billion robots all over the world. Well, I question this because of course you have 10 billion robots adds a lot of adds a lot of uh you reduce the space. I'm not sure I have enough space for more for more robots, for one robot for each person in my family to live in the same space. Uh even if I did, uh that's you know they will do if they do everything, what is what is what is it that would they will do? Uh if everything's automated, digitalized, robots are doing it, and this doesn't come this disrupts things fundamentally all over, and it comes hard and fast when it starts going. And that's those are the big for society, these are the big challenges. And I think when we talk about regulations, we talk about the thought here for me is how do you slow down the process so that people can actually comprehend what's going on and adapt to this to this new reality of uh of AI. I I'd just like to take an opposing view on a whim. I think that over the next 50 years, progress is going to be slower than we expect. Because uh we'll be it'll take some time for AI systems to be fully incorporated into companies and corporations, people will be quite bluntly scared of what AI can do. And perhaps the comparison is putting a man on the moon, which was done in the 1960s, and then we somehow never went back for the following 50 years or thereabouts, and we're going to come back now. So, what I'm trying to say is that looking forward, progress won't necessarily be linear, it'll be by shades and stars, and there may be periods of not very much happening and worries over the issues that the technology creates.

Alberto Souviron 39:51

I I will go in my view of the next 50 years, I will say two things. One thing we are all sure, AI is probably one the most consequential technology that is coming now in our times. And for somebody who loves history like myself, and I always say we have to ask ourselves what was the world view from somebody in the early stages of the industrial revolution who were completely used to do things in a completely different way, medieval agricultural way of doing, and the industrial revolution comes around that, the huge disruptions come. And as you say, Andrew, it it wasn't linear, it's coming ups, downs, and a lot of crises in the middle. So probably it's going to be like this. But there is huge opportunities. There are going to be a lot of changes. I am with Julie in that area. I would say in 50 years, a lot is going to change. If this in the way that I'm saying I all that I can say in Latin America is in 50 years the region is going to be completely different, shaping a lot with AI, but we really don't know what this change is going to be yet. And uh we're just at the beginning of this. With this, I say that I think we covered a lot, so I will say a thank you to both of you. It was a really entertaining conversation today. Thank you. And I hope that well we will continue covering. We have a lot of coming around, we will have also analyzing the region, we have elections in Colombia, Peru, and all the uncertainty, but also we are going to talk about Brazil. A lot of topics going around that, and from the economic, political, and social perspective, as always. With this, I say to everybody until the next time. Bye bye.