In mid-2024, European Union lawmakers signed AI Actthe first law in the world regulating artificial intelligence. This law focuses on the risks of AI and offers a classification of different artificial intelligence systems according to a “risk-based approach”.
The proposed EU regulation classifies artificial intelligence applications and regulates them according to whether they pose unacceptable, high, limited risk or only a minimal threat to people, but What is happening in Latin America? Is artificial intelligence regulated?
Since the great boom of this intelligence in 2023 after the launch, at the end of 2022, of Chat GPT with more than 1 million downloads in just five days, the different governments of the world began to wonder what they should do with this technology and its advances.
At the Future 2024 Congress, Gabriel Boric, President of Chile, said that “Artificial Intelligence will be a great tool for the development of Chile and Latin America, taking the necessary precautions and cultivating a critical awareness.”
While the European Union was looking for rules to regulate this system and the US aimed to enforce intellectual property, the main focus of Latin American governments revolved around the ethical use of this technology and the effort to regulate it without being at the mercy of other countries in the global technological race.
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At the Future 2024 Congress, Gabriel Boric, President of Chile, said that “Artificial Intelligence will be a great tool for the development of Chile and Latin America, taking the necessary precautions and cultivating a critical awareness.”
According to Boric, “AI, as a tool created by humans, is loaded with values and its development needs to be accompanied by deep ethical reflection and regulation.”
In this sense, this same year it was presented in the Chamber of Deputies of Chile a bill that aims to regulate artificial intelligence with a risk-based approach, just like the European law. This bill seeks to promote creation, development and innovation, but without neglecting democratic principles, the rule of law and fundamental rights in general. The aim is to balance innovation with protection.
For its part, by the end of 2023, in the House of Representatives of Colombia A bill was also presented seeking to ensure that technology does not violate the human rights of Colombians, and in 2024 an initiative was presented to harmonize the use of artificial intelligence with people’s right to work.
Mexico was not left behind either and an initiative was already presented in the country to establish a federal law
The main objective, in this case, is to protect workers’ rights and guarantee their job stability. In this regard, Petro spoke about the topic at the ColombIA Summit and gave five proposals that he later shared on his X account to deal with the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence. One of them was that “the hundreds of millions of workers who will leave their jobs be compensated by a global citizen income” and he said that “the substantial increase in productivity by artificial intelligence must become paid free time for all people in the world.”.
Mexico It was not left behind and an initiative was already presented in the country to establish a federal law, Peru has a 2023 law that aims to establish the conditions that guarantee the development and responsible use of AI and Uruguay implements UNESCO’s recommendation on ethics while Argentina It has a guide to regulate the development and ethical use of artificial intelligence systems.
Costa Rica has a bill drafted by artificial intelligence (yes, Chat GPT wrote the entire bill) and All countries, to a greater or lesser extent, are wondering what to do with these new technologies, But the most novel comes from the hand of Lula Da Silva, president of Braziland it is not a bill written by a chatbot but the request to create an artificial intelligence from the global south.
Before the audience of the International Labor Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, the president accused rich countries of creating artificial intelligence to “try to manipulate the rest of humanity” and called for the creation of “a project of the Global South” so that the technology “called to radically change the labor market” lreaches everyone and not just the same countries that always get the best part.”
A few months later, Lula presented an investment plan in artificial intelligence, designed by Brazilian scientists, and spoke of achieving technological sovereignty: “Instead of waiting for AI to come from China, the United States, South Korea or Japan, why not have our own?“A question to reflect on.
