Chile AI adoption could push GDP growth to 5% by 2030
Automation and generative AI could add up to 2.5 percentage points to Chile’s annual productivity growth by 2030, but realizing this dividend hinges on successfully retraining displaced service workers.
McKinsey’s latest Future of Work Latin America report projects that aggressive AI and robotics adoption could add 2.0 to 2.5 percentage points to Chile's annual productivity growth by 2030. Layered onto baseline GDP growth of roughly 2 to 3 percent, this uplift could push Chile's annual economic expansion into the 4 to 5 percent range. The modelling indicates generative AI could automate up to 22 percent of current working hours by the end of the decade.
The automation potential extends well beyond Chile's dominant mining sector into services and white-collar work. Food service and office support face 30 to 35 percent automation potential. Yet, mining remains central to the investment thesis: Chile supplies the copper and lithium required for global AI infrastructure, while simultaneously deploying autonomous haul trucks and AI-driven processing to extract those metals more efficiently.
The domestic robotics market stands at roughly $65 million, concentrated in mining, agriculture and logistics. Industrial IoT sensing is growing 15 to 20 percent annually. Looking further ahead, McKinsey identifies a $100 billion regional knowledge-services export opportunity by 2040, a space where Chile is positioned to capitalize on Spanish-language AI and fintech demand.
The primary risk to this growth trajectory is labour reallocation. Central Bank board member Alberto Naudon noted in a 2026 speech that Chile "has benefited from high copper prices driven by energy transition, digitalisation and increased global defence spending." Capturing the domestic AI dividend, however, requires navigating significant political friction.
McKinsey warns that productivity gains depend entirely on redeploying, not merely replacing, workers. Because the highest automation potential lies in lower-income service roles, inadequate reskilling could trigger a political backlash that stalls adoption. Furthermore, the OECD cautions that Chile must ensure small and medium enterprises adopt digital tools to prevent its dual-economy problem—high-productivity exporters versus low-productivity domestic services—from widening.
Investors will monitor capital flows into mining automation and cloud infrastructure as early indicators of corporate commitment. The government's progress toward raising research and development spending to 2 percent of GDP by 2030 will dictate whether the theoretical multi-point growth uplift materializes.
