The discussion about Artificial Intelligence and the future of work usually makes a mistake: it is spoken in the future tense and with a strong centralism. Both ideas are incorrect. The transformation is already here – 50% of workers globally will need to be retrained within a year – and these strategies cannot be designed in Santiago, but from the concrete reality of companies from Arica to Magallanes.
The risk is that this technological revolution will deepen territorial gaps. What’s more, we see the symptoms in local figures: Tarapacá registers 8% unemployment and an informality rate of 29.7%. We cannot allow “digital centralism”, where advanced skills are concentrated in the capital, while regions grapple with obsolescence.
This Thursday, November 6, we wanted to move from concern to action. In alliance with the Association of Industrialists of Iquique (AII), we brought the “SME Talent Route” to Iquique. The focus was specific: democratize access.
Together with experts like Tadashi Takaoka, we held a workshop so that local leaders and entrepreneurs could apply AI tools in their businesses. We present alliances with Coursera and Desafío Latam, and our “Talento Pyme” platform, a digital ecosystem to guide the diagnosis and support training process.
Our conviction is that talent cannot be just another problem; must be the solution. But for that, innovation must reach those who generate 40% of employment in Chile: SMEs. Although 90% of them recognize the importance of going digital, only 22% have made real progress.
The great challenge is that innovation is not reaching the base. At the national level, only 20.4% of companies declare that they have innovated in collaboration, and in SMEs the number is even lower. This gap is worrying, but it is also an opportunity. We believe that active collaboration is the only engine to break the deadlock. For this reason, our alliance with the Association of Industrialists of Iquique (AII) is not a detail: it is the work model that we are promoting so that good ideas stop remaining on paper.
The future of work is not inevitable. It is designed, and requires active collaboration between all actors. What we did in Iquique is an example of our commitment to designing a future where talent, throughout Chile, is the true engine of development.
By Bárbara Veyl, Manager of Linkage and Social Innovation OTIC CChC