From left: Consultant and Universidad del Turabo professor Gilberto Crespo; Mauricio Romero, vice president of AI and analytics at Liberty LatAm; Norberto Cruz-Córdova, president of the Internet Society, Puerto Rico chapter; Alba Norys De León, president of consulting firm AblaTek LLC; and panel host and event organizer Marcelo Burman during the panel at the Tech Day 2025 event in San Juan.
The aggressive adoption of artificial intelligence by countless industries and the general public is further widening Puerto Rico’s digital divide and posing new challenges on effectively adopting the technology from a public policy perspective, several experts agreed Tuesday during a panel on AI governance and ethics held in San Juan.
“We have been moving in the right direction in terms of connectivity thanks to programs from the Puerto Rico and U.S. federal governments, but there’s still a long way to go, especially in rural areas,” said Norberto Cruz-Córdova, president of the Internet Society’s Puerto Rico chapter. “We also have to strengthen our electric grid before seeing where we stand with AI.”
Telecom companies are also feeling the pressure when it comes to having sufficient infrastructure to handle the so-called AI tsunami. “Everybody wants to have real-time access to highly advanced models that are being trained and hosted in data centers at times millions of milliseconds away,” said Mauricio Romero, vice president of AI and Analytics at Liberty Latin America. “This has made having fast and dependable connections absolutely key and has partly been a driver in the deployment of wireless 5G networks.”
Meanwhile, the private sector in Puerto Rico has found itself at a crossroads, according to Alba Norys De León, president of consulting firm AblaTek, LLC. “Surely many Puerto Rican business owners are faced with this dilemma: How do we keep innovating? On the one hand, innovating is what the market is calling us to do, but on the other hand, we don’t want to cross an ethical line and provoke distrust among the public and our clients,” she said.
De León added there’s been “a little bit of a free rein” when it comes to regulating the new technology in the US, with President Donald Trump having issued executive orders in February and April aimed at eliminating regulatory restrictions to the procurement and use of AI. “It’s a strategic move so that the US can remain a global technological power. I am sure that later on, slightly more rigorous regulations will come because they will be necessary.
In Puerto Rico, the Legislature has moved in a positive direction when it comes to making some regulatory sense of the technology, said consultant and professor Gilberto Crespo, even though none of the five AI-related bills introduced this term have become law.
Senate Bill 68, for instance, would create an Artificial Intelligence Officer within the Puerto Rico Innovation and Technology Service (PRITS) and develop overarching AI policies for government agencies. It passed the Senate in early April and was referred to the House Government Committee, where it currently sits.
Senate Bill 101, which would amend the Electoral Code to require disclosure of AI use in political ads, is being reviewed by the upper chamber’s Government Committee. Another proposal, Senate Bill 348, which would create the legal framework for AI in public education, is in the Rules and Calendar Committee after a handful of committees submitted a joint report with amendments in late May.
In the lower chamber, House Bill 427, which focuses on AI policy for English-language learning, passed in mid-May and is now before the Senate Committee on Science, Technology and Artificial Intelligence. Finally, House Bill 347, which proposes additional AI policy at PRITS, has been pending in the House Government Committee since late February.
The panel was part of the Tech Day Puerto Rico 2025, which drew more than 100 information technology professionals to the Sheraton San Juan Hotel.
Dennis Costa is a writer, editor and journalist with more than 20 years of experience covering Puerto Rico’s business community, including lengthy stints as writer and editor at Caribbean Business and as assistant business editor at El Nuevo Día. Questions? Comments? Email him at [email protected].
