Colombian experts warn AI gap is about readiness not technology

This report from Colombia is a reminder that the global AI story is as much about diffusion as invention. For many emerging markets, the cutting-edge models already exist and are accessible through APIs. The real bottlenecks are skills, organizational change, security posture and regulatory clarity. Large Colombian enterprises are apparently moving ahead, but SMEs and public agencies are not yet structurally ready to integrate AI into core workflows.

From an AGI perspective, that asymmetry matters. If advanced capabilities remain concentrated in a relatively small set of large organizations, the benefits and risks of more general systems will be similarly concentrated. Societies where only a narrow elite can effectively harness AI are more likely to see political backlash, uneven productivity gains, and shallow experimentation.

For the race to AGI, this suggests that global impact will hinge not only on when frontier labs cross certain capability thresholds, but on how fast countries build institutional capacity around them. Places that invest early in workforce training, sector-specific standards and cybersecurity will be better positioned to adopt powerful systems safely when they arrive.