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Costa Rica will be the first country in Central America to have an Artificial Intelligence strategy

The objective of this commitment is to establish the bases of cooperation between Costa Rica and UNESCO in Artificial Intelligence (AI).

En la foto, de izquierda a derecha, se encuentran Alexei Carrillo, Ministro interino de Salud, Eleonora Lamm, responsable del sector de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas de UNESCO San José y Paula Bogantes Zamora, Ministra de Ciencia, Innovación, Tecnología y Telecomunicaciones de Costa Rica con la reciente firmada carta de compromiso para el desarrollo de una estrategia de Inteligencia Artificial.

Mariana

Álvarez

28 February 2023

Last update: 1 March 2023

The Ministry of Science, Innovation, Technology and Telecommunications (MICITT) of Costa Rica signed a letter of commitment with UNESCO, through which an action plan is agreed for Costa Rica to develop an Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategy in accordance with the "Recommendation on ethics in artificial intelligence" by UNESCO, also supported by the Andean Development Cooperation (CAF).

Both parties, with this letter, commit to developing a national AI policy, accompanying workshops, identifying AI projects in the country and presenting this strategy in August 2023. In this way, Costa Rica will become the first country in Central America to have an AI policy.

Alexander Leicht, director of the UNESCO San José Multi-Country Office, stated that for UNESCO it is important to link ethics with artificial intelligence. We are currently working with several countries on this important recommendation, and we are very pleased that a country so committed to innovation and responsible development joins this initiative.

Paula Bogantes Zamora, Minister of Science, Innovation, Technology and Telecommunications of Costa Rica, pointed out that “AI is helping us to solve problems effectively and in a more informed and fair way. AI has enormous potential, but at the same time it poses great challenges. Thus, it is important that we address these issues proactively and ethically and work together to ensure that AI is used for the well-being of society as a whole."

For his part, the Internal Minister of Health, Alexei Carrillo, pointed out the importance of these tools for people's lives. “Medicine has been practiced in the same way for 3,000 years and that must change. Costa Rica has great technological and professional capacity and we can take advantage of this for health”, he highlighted.

Recently, the Minister of Science, Innovation, Technology and Telecommunications of Costa Rica expressed her commitment for the State to become part of the "Network of first adopter countries of the Recommendation on ethics in artificial intelligence".

This was done through an official letter to UNESCO's Deputy Director General for Social and Human Sciences, Gabriela Ramos, who from Paris expressed her satisfaction in noting that the region is advancing in the implementation of the Recommendation and urged it to follow this path of world leadership.

About the event

The signing of the agreement took place within the framework of the event "Towards an artificial intelligence strategy in Costa Rica". The event was attended by MICCIT, the Ministry of Health, UNESCO San José, the National Center for High Technology (CeNAT), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the fAIr LAC Initiative for Costa Rica.