On August 12, 13, 19, and 20, a series of conversations took place at the Buenos Aires headquarters of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in the form of a training course entitled “Technologies Under Debate: A Toolkit for Understanding the Present.” Featuring presentations by Beatriz Busaniche, Enrique Chaparro, Nicolás Wolovick, and Margarita Trovato, this document is a summary based on transcripts of the lectures delivered during those sessions.
The trajectory of this publication begins with the geopolitical framework proposed by Beatriz Busaniche, who dismantles the official narrative promising to position Argentina as a “fourth power in artificial intelligence.” Busaniche demonstrates that the deregulation policies and strategic alignment promoted by Javier Milei’s government do not lead to the scientific forefront, but rather to the consolidation of a digital enclave economy.
Enrique Chaparro takes a conceptual and epistemological approach to the discourses sustaining the reign of Artificial Intelligence. Under the provocative title “Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Indigence,” he deconstructs the taxonomies crafted by Silicon Valley marketing and denounces the harmful habit of anthropomorphizing device behavior.
Nicolás Wolovick, Director of Supercomputing at the National University of Córdoba (UNC), introduces a key premise: a person’s digital citizenship today is directly determined by the computing power at their disposal.
Finally, Margarita Trovato exposes the gap between the normative “ought to be” of the Personal Data Protection Law (No. 25,326) and the actual practices of surveillance and mass data cross-referencing by the Argentine state.
Together, these perspectives share a common thread: the urgent need to defend Fundamental Rights within the geopolitical, technical, and legal dimensions of our present day.