Key Takeaways:
- Latin America’s educational system is a fragile promise that can either bridge inequality or reflect and deepen it
- Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to democratize access to knowledge, but it also risks exacerbating existing divides if not implemented equitably
- The region’s educational inequality is a result of historical, structural, and persistent factors, including unequal access to resources, infrastructure, and opportunities
- AI literacy is essential for students to participate fully in society and to question, create, interpret, and evaluate information in an AI-mediated world
- The responsibility to ensure AI reduces rather than reinforces inequality lies with educators, policymakers, innovators, and universities
Introduction to the Issue
Latin America has always had a wealth of talent, but it has historically lacked equal access to the conditions that allow talent to flourish. Education has been the region’s fragile promise, a pathway for mobility, stability, and a bridge across inequality. However, the educational system has also been a reflection of who gets to participate fully in society and who grows up lacking opportunity. As artificial intelligence (AI) promises to transform how we learn, work, and communicate, Latin America stands at a new frontier. AI could democratize access to knowledge, personalize learning, accelerate innovation, and open doors for millions, but it could also deepen the very divides it claims to help solve.
The Unequal Starting Line
If AI is a race, Latin America is entering it with runners standing on very different starting blocks. Schools across the region vary immensely in infrastructure, teacher training, connectivity, and learning outcomes. The Covid-19 pandemic exposed this dramatically, with many families struggling to access virtual classes and students being forced to share devices or go without. As Vanesa Fregoso, director of an USAER team in Jalisco, Mexico, noted, "During those years, I worked with families who had only one cellphone to connect to virtual classes, and sometimes parents had to choose which child would attend school that day." This inequality did not begin with the pandemic, but the pandemic made it impossible to ignore.
The Epistemic Divide
AI now enters this landscape as both an opportunity and a catalyst. The opportunity is enormous, with adaptive tools, intelligent tutors, automated feedback, and language models capable of explaining complex concepts that could reduce learning gaps at scale. However, the catalyst is just as real, and if AI becomes embedded in some schools but remains inaccessible for many others, inequality will grow not gradually but exponentially. Students with early exposure will develop new literacies, analytical, creative, and technological skills that will define the expectations of universities and employers. Those without such access risk falling behind long before adulthood. As the author notes, "This is not simply a digital divide. It is an epistemic divide, a gap in who can question, create, interpret, and evaluate information in an AI-mediated world."
The Educational Divide Beneath the Digital Divide
It is tempting to assume that AI inequality is about hardware, bandwidth, or software licenses. However, the deeper challenge is educational. AI rewards curiosity, questioning, creativity, experimentation, and critical thinking, which are the very competencies that rigid curricula and under-resourced systems struggle to nurture. Vanesa described many public schools that "do not have all their teaching staff, lack adequate infrastructure, and sometimes don’t even have internet to use technology." Students who already face disadvantages encounter technological barriers layered on top of educational ones. Even when teachers want to innovate, many face fear, uncertainty, or lack of training, which are signs of systemic fragility.
The Gap
In urban, digitally connected, and socioeconomically privileged settings, students may already be experimenting with AI tools to draft essays, prepare for exams, or even learn coding. Their teachers often have more training and time to explore new pedagogies, supported by schools with reliable internet, devices, professional development workshops, and institutional support. These students are not only using AI; they are learning to think with it. This reality contrasts sharply with rural schools that are often under-resourced and structurally excluded, where students may share a single device at home or have none at all, teachers may work across multiple grades simultaneously, and internet stability is a luxury.
When Technology Meets Reality
Even if every school in Latin America received a laptop for every student and high-speed internet tomorrow, inequality would persist. Because the real divide does not begin with technology; it begins with educational culture. AI does not arrive in a vacuum; it arrives in systems where teachers already work under extraordinary pressure, with limited training, scarce resources, and little room to experiment without risking criticism or failure. Many fear being judged or replaced, while others simply mistrust technologies introduced from above without meaningful consultation or support. As Vanesa observed, teachers are often summoned to workshops to "receive information and replicate it," only to discover that bringing these tools into real classrooms is far more difficult than policymakers imagine.
When AI Becomes a Marker of Belonging
The greatest risk is that Latin America becomes a region where some children grow up fluent in AI, and others grow up governed by it. Those who understand AI will be able to question it, adapt it, and use it to generate value. Those who lack AI literacy will become passive recipients of algorithmic decisions affecting jobs, credit, security, healthcare, public benefits, and democratic participation. This is how inequality becomes structural: not because technology chooses winners and losers but because societies fail to decide who gets to participate in shaping technology. As Vanesa observed, "If these gaps are not addressed, the technological divide will grow. The work with students in public schools will remain as it is today, and only a few will have access to technology and proper use of AI."
Who Gets to Decide?
Perhaps the most sobering part of the conversation with Vanesa was her reflection on decision-making. "I honestly don’t know who decides about technology in public schools," she told me. Teachers are often told to attend workshops, absorb information, and return to classrooms where none of the conditions exist to put it into practice. Policy and reality rarely meet. When asked what message she would send to policymakers and innovators working in more privileged contexts, she said simply: "They need to get closer to vulnerable communities, live this reality, and listen to the teachers who work directly with students." This is a reminder that AI policy cannot be designed from conference rooms alone; it must be designed in the classroom.
Choosing a Path Forward
A path forward is still within reach, but only if Latin America treats AI not as a technological upgrade but as a project of equity. To ensure AI reduces rather than reinforces inequality, the region must act with intention and urgency. This begins by establishing AI literacy as a fundamental educational right. It also requires investing first where inequality actually lives; in rural schools, public institutions, and communities that have historically been excluded from previous waves of innovation. But perhaps the most transformative step is to build local AI ecosystems to shift from merely consuming imported technologies to producing homegrown ones that reflect the region’s languages, cultures, pedagogies, and lived realities. As the author notes, "The future will not wait. And neither can we."
Unequal Beginnings: Artificial Intelligence and Latin America’s Educational Divide