Chile
This profile summarises the Key Insights arising from the completion of the Readiness Assessment Methodology (RAM) for Chile and provides information about the country's AI policies and frameworks.
Chile's RAM data and Country Report are publicly available and can be downloaded below.
The Chilean Readiness Assessment Methodology
Hear from Aisén Etcheverry Escudero.
Chile's Minister of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation discusses UNESCO's Readiness Assessment Methodology (RAM) exercise as applied in Chile.
Key Insights
Investment in AI in Chile is skyrocketing. Estimated venture capital investments in AI start-ups from US$4m in 2018 to $91m by 2020, and overall VC investments similarly increased more than between 2018 and 2023, with private investment in AI .
Chile’s 2021 National Artificial Intelligence Policy (NAIP) represents a substantive and wide-ranging commitment to developing AI. One of the key recommendations of the 2023 RAM country report is to fully integrate the UNESCO Recommendation into the NAIP’s axis of Ethics, Regulation, and Socioeconomic Impacts.
The biggest gaps are in the legal dimension, in particular the need to update the privacy law and cybersecurity. However, it is important to note that Chile's AI strategy has already made several advances in areas such as the procurement of AI systems.
The strongest dimension is infrastructure.
Chile ranks among the highest global standards for internet network speed, and is in the top 10 countries in terms of mobile data consumption rates. But there is still a strong rural-urban digital divide. While the percentage of households residing in urban areas with internet access was 90% in 2017, compared with 77% in rural areas, there is a more significant gap in access to high-speed fixed networks, which accounted for 70% in urban areas and 10% in rural areas in 2022.
The report also notes improvements in human capital, with Chile’s talent concentration in AI growing every year since 2017. However, there is a substantial gender gap in STEM.
The proportion of men studying science or mathematics and aspiring to work as STEM professionals at age 30 is 38% compared with 23% of women. This is also reflected in talent concentration in AI, which is more than double for men compared with women. In both of these areas (rural-urban divide and gender gap in STEM), policy measures and various programs are being developed to promote diversity and inclusiveness.
Public spending on research and development remains comparatively low at 0.34% of GDP in 2020 and Chile ranks only fifth in cybersecurity in the region. But Chile scores relatively highly in online services provided by government (36th among 193 countries), open data (scoring 52.9 in the Global Data Barometer 2022), public engagement with technology (43rd among 193 countries) and trust in government websites and apps (40th among 100 countries).
Country Landscape
AI systems shape and are shaped by a socio-technical landscape of institutions, geographies, and cultural contexts. Therefore, to better understand the environment of the design, development, and deployment of AI systems within countries, it is critical to view these processes with a lens towards the country as a whole.
The share of population with access to electricity is calculated by the World Bank and displayed by Our World in Data. The World Bank defines access to electricity as 'having an electricity source that can provide very basic lighting, and charge a phone or power a radio for 4 hours a day'. This data was last reported as a 100 % for Chile in 2020.
The share of the population using the internet is compiled by the ITU.
Last documented in 2021, they reported 90.2% of the population as using the internet in Chile.
The World Bank scores countries on various statistical performance indicators including data infrastructure. This score 'measures the hard and soft infrastructure segments, itemizing essential cross-cutting requirements for an effective statistical system'. The score is based on a range of 0 to 100, with 100 representing the best score.
