The error is not using AI, but failing to decide how to complement it with the human element.
ACDE leadership credits fiscal discipline and societal effort for Argentina's macroeconomic ordering, positioning the country as competitive in energy and tech sectors. Business leaders warn of demographic crisis (fertility rate 1.4 vs. 2.1 needed) and labor displacement from AI, while advocating values-based education and human-centric workplace culture.
- Argentina's fertility rate is 1.4, down from 2.1 needed for population replacement
- Births fell from 777,000 in 2014 to 413,000 in 2024
- ACDE leaders credit fiscal discipline and societal effort for macroeconomic stabilization
- Labor leader cited 70% unemployment as a structural crisis
Argentine business executives at ACDE's annual conference emphasized macroeconomic stabilization while addressing AI disruption, demographic decline, and the need for human-centered corporate practices amid global uncertainty.
Argentina's business establishment gathered this week for the annual conference of the Christian Association of Business Leaders, and the mood was one of cautious optimism mixed with deep structural anxiety. The country, they said, is finally finding macroeconomic footing—but the ground itself is shifting beneath everyone's feet.
Víctor Valle, the association's president, opened the conversation by urging executives to abandon what he called a "short-term mentality" locked inside their own organizations. Argentina has talent and resources to compete globally, he argued, yet business leaders remain confined to their comfort zones. The real work, he suggested, lies in thinking bigger and bolder. But that external ambition must be paired with something internal: companies that are not just productive but profoundly human. Technology frightens people, Valle said. The responsibility of business is to help workers understand and adapt to change, not to fear it.
On the macroeconomic front, Valle offered a diagnosis that felt almost paradoxical: the country is ordering itself while the world grows more chaotic. The fiscal surplus is real and necessary—a foundation, not a destination. But sustainable development requires something harder to engineer: Argentines listening to one another across ideological lines, respecting disagreement, building consensus that actually holds. Valle expressed concern that debate has become a trap, dividing people and trapping them in conflict and indifference. He called for a pause, a moment to think about families and future generations, to construct a common path together.
The conference's spiritual dimension—marked by a message from Pope Leo XIV encouraging participants to seek God sincerely—underscored a deeper anxiety about what kind of society Argentina is becoming. Alejandra Ferraro, who led the 29th annual gathering, described the current moment as one of extreme fragility, unpredictability, and non-linear change. Artificial intelligence sits at the center of this transformation. The International Monetary Fund projects that millions of new jobs will emerge by 2030, but millions of existing jobs will vanish or be fundamentally altered. Ferraro admitted this generates anxiety, but also drives her toward action and a more active role in shaping workplace culture.
Labor leader Carlos Custer raised a starker concern: unemployment. He pointed to a troubling statistic—70 percent of the population without work—and drew a comparison to apartheid-era South Africa, where a small privileged minority lived in a developed country while the vast majority struggled to survive. Argentina, he suggested, is drifting toward a similar division: concentrated wealth among minorities, mounting problems for the majority.
Demographic collapse emerged as another crisis. María Inés Passanante, a professor at the Catholic University of Argentina, presented the numbers: Argentina needs a fertility rate of at least 2.1 children per woman to sustain its population. The actual rate is 1.4. In 2014, the country recorded 777,000 births. By 2024, that figure had fallen to 413,000. This "demographic winter," as experts call it, mirrors the anxiety gripping developed nations worldwide. Passanante proposed that the solution lies in cultural and values education—orienting young people toward family and a meaningful life project.
International analyst Fabián Calle offered a counterweight to the gloom. Argentina is becoming a major producer of oil, gas, lithium, and copper. Cold-climate zones equipped with artificial intelligence and renewable energy make the country uniquely compatible with both the United States and the European Union. There is genuine economic momentum, Calle argued, and a shift in mentality across sectors that enabled an economic adjustment unprecedented in Argentine history.
Education became a focal point for reconciling human and machine. Claudia Viviana Gómez, president of the Queen Mary Foundation, stated plainly: you cannot compete with artificial intelligence in education. Instead, you must learn to coexist with it. The irreplaceably human elements are values formation, team building, critical thinking, and creativity. Majd Sakr, Chief Learning and Research Officer at Accenture, identified four capacities that machines cannot replicate: judgment, context, responsibility, and the creation of meaning in complex situations. These are not soft skills, he emphasized—they are central capabilities for operating in an AI-augmented world. Walter Abrigo, a director at Santex, captured the essential tension: the error is not using artificial intelligence, but failing to decide how to complement it with the human element. That decision, and how Argentina makes it, will shape whether the macroeconomic order now emerging can actually hold.
Citas Notables
The country is ordering itself while the world grows more chaotic; sustainable development requires Argentines listening to one another across ideological lines and building consensus that actually holds.— Víctor Valle, ACDE president
You cannot compete with artificial intelligence in education; the irreplaceably human elements are values formation, team building, critical thinking, and creativity.— Claudia Viviana Gómez, Queen Mary Foundation president
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
When Valle talks about companies being "profoundly human," what does that actually mean in practice?
It means recognizing that technology creates real fear in workers—fear of obsolescence, of losing identity in your job. A profoundly human company doesn't just deploy the tool; it invests in helping people understand it, retrain, adapt. It's the difference between automation as replacement and automation as augmentation.
But Custer's point about 70 percent unemployment seems to contradict the optimism about economic momentum.
It does. That's the real tension in the room. There's genuine macroeconomic progress—fiscal discipline, commodity exports, AI infrastructure potential. But none of that reaches people without work. The fear is that Argentina could have a stable economy and a fractured society simultaneously.
The demographic crisis—fertility at 1.4 instead of 2.1—that's not something business can solve, is it?
Not directly. But it signals something deeper: young people don't see a future stable enough to build families in. That's partly economic, partly cultural. Passanante's point about values education is saying: if you want people to commit to family, you have to give them reasons to believe in continuity, in meaning beyond consumption.
So the AI question and the demographic question are actually the same question?
In a way, yes. Both ask: what makes life worth living when machines can do the work? What gives meaning? That's why the conference kept circling back to judgment, context, responsibility—the things that require you to be fully human, fully present.
And Argentina thinks it has an advantage here?
Calle's argument is that Argentina has the raw materials and geography for a real economic future. But Valle's argument is that none of it works without social cohesion, without people actually listening to each other. The macroeconomic order is arriving, but whether it holds depends on whether Argentines can build consensus across their divisions.