Milei Offers AI Firms Freedom as Science Funding Falls

President Javier Milei invited companies to develop artificial intelligence in Argentina with tax breaks, limited liability for companies operating with AI agents and a pledge not to regulate the technology preemptively. The pitch puts corporate freedom up front while the country’s science funding, computing capacity and data protections remain strained.

Soledad Guilera, who directs Executive Education in AI and Public Policy at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, advises the IDB on AI readiness and chairs the AI Readiness and Resilience Task Force of the University of California Disaster Resilience Network. In an Americas Quarterly article dated October 28, 2026, she argued that Argentina needs greater certainty, not deregulation, to build its AI sector.

The infrastructure gap

Argentina accounts for 2.3% of the region’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, and 1.1% of its processing power. It has seven certified data centers; Chile has 37. NVIDIA Corp and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) are among the companies producing GPUs used to power large data centers and AI systems.

The country’s last major high-voltage transmission line was completed in 2017. A government infrastructure plan worth $6.6 billion, presented in May 2025, had reached only the bidding stage at the time of the article. Those numbers sit awkwardly beside a pitch for companies to bring computing-intensive AI operations to Argentina.

A government announcement for a data center in Patagonia, worth up to $25 billion, came two weeks before the October 2025 midterm elections. It rested on a letter of intent between OpenAI and a local energy company. By October 2026, the project did not appear among those approved under the incentive regime it was meant to use.

Argentina ranks sixth out of 20 in the 2026 Latin American AI Index, behind Chile, Brazil and Uruguay. Brazil’s Senate approved a comprehensive AI bill in 2024, but it remains in the lower house; Chile and Uruguay have no such law. All three countries score the same as Argentina on the index’s regulation indicator. The countries ranked ahead of Argentina have focused on data centers, AI training, sustained research teams, business adoption and using AI to engage citizens.

Who pays for the retreat

Federal science spending is on track to fall to about 0.16% of GDP in 2026, from 0.30% in 2023, a real cut of more than 40%. Staffing at the seven main federal science and technology agencies fell 13% between December 2023 and August 2026. The research group EPC attributed the reductions to cuts, closures, retirements, selective layoffs and restructuring of several agencies.

Argentina’s data protection law dates from 2000. It treats consent as the default basis for using personal data, regulates automated decisions only by courts and public agencies, and caps fines at 100,000 pesos, about $65. In December 2025, the data protection authority opened an investigation into a massive alleged leak of citizens’ personal data. The International Telecommunication Union’s Global Cybersecurity Index places Argentina in its fourth of five tiers.

Guilera described the decisions people may face: a doctor deciding whether to trust an algorithm to read scans, a loan officer asked to let a model approve credit, and a retiree whose benefit is denied by an unexplained system. Investors and consumers, she wrote, need clear answers about responsibility, personal data and access to human review.

Promises, bills and accountability

A new incentive law for AI and data centers, approved by the lower house in June 2026, still awaited a Senate vote. A bill allowing companies to operate through AI agents had been in a Senate committee since June without a formal report. The legislative pipeline offers no guarantee that investment, infrastructure or public accountability will arrive together.

Guilera proposed pairing AI incentives with funded plans for transmission lines and computing power, guaranteed access for local researchers and companies, joint training programs, and stable, multiyear funding for AI research teams. She also called for updated data protections, a right to human review of automated decisions, impact assessments for high-risk uses and safeguards for cloud data transfers. A data protection authority proposal drafted in 2023 lapsed in Congress, although Argentina had ratified a Council of Europe convention committing it to those standards.

The government already offers an AI assistant in an official app reaching 26 million people. Guilera said the state should demonstrate its performance, publish a list of algorithms used in areas including security and defense, protect government-held data and require public agencies to report breaches. Her final warning cuts through the sales pitch: “Milei told the world Argentina is open for AI, but investors will not come on a promise, and Argentines won't trust a technology that no one answers for.”