What’s keeping CISOs up at night around the globe? In the fifth and final part of our global insights series,
Claudia Daré
at
LatAm Intersect PR
shares her thoughts on the evolution of technology and the emergence of Generative AI.
- Digital transformation in Latin America: This has historically taken a different path to that in Europe and the US, characterised by Geoffrey A More’s seminal book, ‘Crossing the Chasm’ (2009).? The latter describes a process – commencing with visionaries and early adopters – through which innovations eventually become mainstream; and evidenced by technologies ranging from Cloud services to smartphones. The equivalent process for Latin America is distinct; mass adoption tends to be subject to a single, critical moment at which the refusal to adapt becomes simply untenable. NuBank’s arrival in 2013 eventually became the lever to challenge the banking incumbents’ monopoly and paved the way for hundreds of fintech alternatives; prior to this the digital transformation of banks across the globe had little impact on the region. It was only when operators started heavily subsidising smartphone handsets (around 2014) that social media really took off in Latin America.??
- The pandemic and innovation: More recently, the pandemic represented a ‘critical moment’ for a number of innovations to become the norm: from home working (just 3% registered employees in Latin America worked from home prior to COVID-19, a figure surged to between 20% and 30% according to the ILO following the same), to online banking (according to Mastercard, between June and October 2020 (ie. five months into the crisis) over 40 million Latin Americans had been financially ‘included’ for the first time through online Government support programmes). The reverse of this ‘critical moment’ syndrome is that the absence of such as trigger tends to signal inertia in terms of adoption; only 7% of the region’s population are likely to be connected to 5G by 2025 (compared to a global figure of 14%). The absence of a ‘no alternative’ moment looks like delaying mainstream adoption for the foreseeable future.?
- The emergence of Generative AI: This could provide a counterpoint to this historical trend. Despite the notable absence of any ‘critical moment’ – it would be a stretch to describe the technology as ‘indispensable’ in any sense – Latin Americans appear to be adopting it voluntarily. In the first quarter of this year, according to Bloomberg, 303 million visits to ChatGPT emanated from Latin America, representing 10% of the total visits worldwide.? A deeper look reveals which countries are the most interested in Generative AI: Brazil 2.2% (of the global total), Colombia 1.9%, México 1.7%, Chile 0.72%, Argentina 0.71%, Peru 0.71%, Ecuador 0.7% and Dominican Republic 0.4%. And these are global percentages, remember.
- Breaking Latin America’s ‘critical moment’ syndrome: Latin America is emerging as a prominent destination for start-ups and tech entrepreneurs, providing home to 34 new unicorns in 2021 alone, more than half of which will benefit from or use Generative AI in their offering in the future. The signs are there. . . . maybe Generative Al will be the technology to break Latin America’s ‘critical moment’ syndrome once and for all. We’ll be watching closely.
