Hardware Over Human Capital? Smartphone Access, Generative AI and Early-Stage Entrepreneurship in Latin America

Luis Enrique Landa Fournais; Sara Maria Landa Lizarralde

doi:10.36105/theanahuacjour.2026v26n1.3098

Autores/as

Luis Enrique Landa Fournais Universidad Anáhuac México https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0932-7734
Sara Maria Landa Lizarralde Brandeis University, Waltham, United States https://orcid.org/0009-0006-6224-0618

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.36105/theanahuacjour.2026v26n1.3098

Palabras clave:

Inteligencia artificial, brecha digital, actividad empresarial total, América Latina, acceso mediante teléfonos inteligentes

Resumen

El lanzamiento público de ChatGPT a finales de 2022 puso capacidades avanzadas de inteligencia artificial al alcance de cualquier persona. Utilizando datos de Latinobarómetro 2020 y 2023 (N = 38,106 para 17 países), analizamos cómo este avance impactó el emprendimiento en ciernes, medido a través de la Actividad Emprendedora Total (TEA). Los resultados muestran que la educación superior no tuvo un efecto significativo sobre la TEA en 2023 respecto a 2020, mientras que los adultos con teléfono inteligente aumentaron su actividad emprendedora en 6.1 puntos porcentuales (p = 0.001). Estas estimaciones son robustas frente a pruebas de inferencia agrupadas, lo cual sugiere que el acceso a la tecnología potencia el emprendimiento basado en IA, permitiendo que la innovación se desarrolle con rapidez y ampliando las capacidades aportadas por el capital humano formal.

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Biografía del autor/a

Luis Enrique Landa Fournais, Universidad Anáhuac México

Dr. Luis Landa-Fournais is currently a tenured professor at the Economics and Business Department at the Universidad Anahuac in Mexico City. He earned a master’s and a Ph.D. in Economics from Georgetown University in the United States.
He served as Administrator in the Central Administration for Transfer Pricing Audits at the Tax Administration Service in Mexico (SAT) and as an economist at the World Bank. During the first two years of President Lopez Obrador’s administration (2019-2020), he served as CFO at the National Banking and Securities Commission.
Sara Maria Landa Lizarralde, Brandeis University, Waltham, United States

Sara Landa holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and an MBA from Brandeis University in the United States. She is currently linked with Brandeis University and is also an independent entrepreneur and consultant for startup companies. In 2019, Sara was selected as one of the winners of the “Innovators Under 35 Latin America 2019” by MIT Technology Review (Spanish edition).

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