Latin America told AI could lift productivity growth up to 2.3% annually

The Davos‑era framing of AI as a once‑in‑a‑generation productivity lever for Latin America is both an opportunity and a warning. A potential 2.3% annual boost to productivity would be transformative in a region long stuck in low‑growth equilibria, but the World Economic Forum–McKinsey numbers come with a catch: fewer than a quarter of organizations are capturing any value from AI today.

Strategically, that gap suggests the frontier labs and hyperscalers that dominate AI discussions are only one part of the story. The real determinant of regional outcomes will be whether mid‑market firms, public agencies, and infrastructure operators can actually absorb AI into their processes—something that depends as much on skills, governance, and connectivity as on model quality. If that doesn’t happen, Latin America risks becoming primarily a consumer of foreign AI platforms rather than a producer, deepening existing dependency patterns.

For the AGI race, this underscores the geography of who benefits. Capabilities are being built in a small set of countries, but economic upside will be uneven unless there’s serious investment in local talent, data infrastructure, and institutions. The more that policymakers in the region treat AI as a productivity agenda rather than just a buzzword, the more likely we are to see diversified, globally relevant AI ecosystems instead of a handful of import‑dependent markets.