DISCLAIMER: The image accompanying this post was created using an artificial intelligence tool. Besides being transparent with our audience, we also believe that it was the obvious choice in this case. 

Yesterday's solutions can't fix tomorrow's problems. Now more than ever, this adage rings true. As Latin America and the Caribbean approach the tipping point of survivable global warming, we urgently need fresh tools and human creativity to turn the tide. 

Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI)—the technology that enables machines to simulate human learning, computing, and predictions. 

The region is already harnessing the power of AI. As my colleagues wrote, the Pantera Platform uses advanced algorithms to detect fires via satellites and cameras. 

In healthcare, predictive AI diagnoses illnesses in remote communities, utilizing smartphone cameras to detect tropical diseases early. 

The IDB’s 2024 macroeconomic report is now an interactive document that provides real-time insights, allowing users to explore scenarios and receive answers tailored to their queries. 

The possibilities are vast. 

AI can reduce costs, optimize product design, and create social value—all essential for making it easier for capital to flow to climate investments, including biodiversity monitoring and conservation – thus taking us all one step closer to Peace with Nature, the theme of COP16. 

Key Areas

With only 17% of the UN Sustainable Development Goals on target for 2030, combining AI with visionary leadership could catalyze the $470 billion to $1.3 trillion in annual investment dollars that IDB estimates are needed to achieve climate goals. 

IDB Invest identifies three priority areas where responsible AI can play a pivotal role. 

1. Caribbean Resilience

AI's capacity to scale information and generate analytics could be a game-changer for coastal economies and local ecosystems, especially in the Caribbean. AI could create models that predict weather patterns, crop yields, soil erosion, and supply chain disruptions. When paired with Earth Observation data, AI can analyze infrastructure and building locations while recording species and habitat locations, enhancing disaster mitigation and response. We can integrate this data into investment decisions by collaborating with local partners, ensuring smarter coastal project locations, nature-based solutions, and adaptation strategies.

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2. The Amazon 

AI can play a pivotal role in protecting the Amazon Region. For example, to remove deforestation in its supply chain, Unilever is teaming up with Google satellites, including geospatial analytics and AI, to help sustainable palm oil sourcing and manage forest commodity risks. Separately, reforestation in the Amazon forest is currently considered the largest human-led initiative for atmospheric carbon sequestration and could account for 15% of global removal. Technologies like satellites and AI could improve accountability on emissions, ensuring we support reforestation efforts that work and discontinue fraudulent or ineffective programs. Initiatives like IDB Invest's Amazônia360 leverage AI to enhance sustainable practices and monitor reforestation projects effectively, promoting transparency and impact. Similar technology is also being applied to biodiversity, with one such model,  able to calculate the costs and benefits of conservation.

3. Clean Energy

AI can revolutionize clean energy project lifecycles —from energy forecasting and site selection to procurement, installation, and maintenance. Enhanced data insights can inform decision-making, especially for weather-dependent renewable sources like wind. AI-powered forecasting can potentially optimize grid management, storage, and distribution—a win for investors, operators, and customers alike. Further, AI could also add value when evaluating market trends, regulatory changes, and the health of capital equipment, such as costly batteries and solar panels. In the context of clean energy, we would be remiss to ignore the tremendous energy usage of AI data processing. IEA’s latest estimates indicate that 2022 AI data centers consumed up to 1.3% of global energy. Scaling energy efficiency mechanisms and clean energy generation can potentially feed back into powering the very systems that designed them.

Responsible AI

Governments, donors, private companies, and peer multilateral institutions must unite under a shared ethos of implementing impactful, responsible AI that is inclusive and accessible. 

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Currently, only 2% of companies have operationalized mechanisms for responsible AI usage. Unless this number increases, the technology risks doing more harm than good – utilizing opaque processes, excluding specific populations, widening inequalities, and producing damaging results. 

We've learned from the past, like the uneven rollout of broadband internet, which left many in the region behind. 

One lesson is that more than connectivity is needed; we must ensure that workers in the region are equipped with the digital literacy and skills to utilize and innovate with AI. 

At the same time, delaying our action with too many bureaucratic frameworks and processes, risks postponing development and leaving the region behind. 

Faith in People

IDB Invest trends are optimistic. Responsible AI can and should be our next frontier. 

Our originate-to-share model aims to mobilize more funding from third-party investors, ramping up investments in the Caribbean, the Amazon Region, and the regional energy transition for scalable impact. 

IDB Invest's recent partnerships show that when we mobilize people and capital, the sum is greater than the individual parts. We have financing networks, blue bonds, and clean energy deals now in motion. 

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As Steve Jobs once said, "It's not faith in technology. It's faith in people." If we can work with each other and with nature and stay laser-focused on just transition, AI can help us accelerate a sustainable future for Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Let's seize this moment!