Milei hints at Big Tech plans for government

Argentina’s president has discussed AI with Meta and Google

Artificial intelligence could be key to supercharging Argentina’s libertarian reforms, from education to government layoffs, President Javier Milei has suggested.

Milei was recently in the US, where he met with Silicon Valley magnates, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. The subject of AI came up in the meetings, Milei said in an interview with Radio Mitre.

“Meta has an entire system in place to train human capital, to train people so that, let’s say, they can build a career,” said Milei, adding that the government in Buenos Aires will start talks with the company “to implement artificial intelligence in the education of our children” starting this week.

The proposal has already been discussed with Human Capital Minister Sandra Pettovello, he noted.

Milei is also looking to AI to speed up the process of slashing the government in a way that would be “permanent and eternal,” in the words of his spokesman Manuel Adorni.

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“For every job in the public sector, at least one job is lost in the private sector,” the president said on air. “Everything we do to shrink the size of the state results in more jobs in the private sector.”

Milei also suggested that El Salvador has already leveraged AI to carry out reforms. The Argentinian president has just returned from the inauguration of his Salvadorian colleague Nayib Bukele.

“Google has a system set up to reform the state with artificial intelligence. Do you know where it was successfully applied? In El Salvador,” Milei told Radio Mitre. “Do you think the discussions with Bukele were limited to the seven and a half minutes we allowed to be filmed?”

“Anything related to shrinking the state, I am delighted!” he added.

When Milei came to power last December, the Argentine peso recorded a 300% annual inflation rate. Since then, his “shock therapy” reforms have managed to stabilize the currency. He has also vowed to eliminate 70,000 government jobs and discontinue over 200,000 social welfare programs as part of reforms intended to purge Argentina of “corruption” by the political establishment.