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The Academy of Sciences of Cuba announced the creation of the Artificial Intelligence Consortium in a context of blackouts lasting over 20 hours and an expensive, slow, and unstable connection, a contradiction that puts into tension the promise of uniting national talent to drive digital solutions.
The consortium established this Saturday represents a "great alliance" that brings together universities such as CUJAE, the University of Havana, and UCI, alongside state-owned technology companies like DATYS, XETID, ETECSA, and BioCubaFarma, as well as private enterprises, government ministries, and the Union of Computer Scientists of Cuba as representatives of civil society, the institution detailed on its Facebook profile.
The idea is that, instead of working in a scattered manner, all these institutions collaborate as a single "Cuba team" to coordinate projects, avoid duplication, and develop AI solutions applied to sectors such as health, education, transportation, agriculture, procedures, and services.
The Havana Scientific and Technological Park will be responsible for coordination within the framework of the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy and the model of “science and innovation-based governance” promoted by the authorities.
The Academy emphasized that the consortium will begin with 22 founding members, but it will soon open to other interested institutions, with a promise to transform it into a broader collaborative space.
The entity also stated that this collaboration is already showing immediate results at the Havana International Fair (Fihav) 2025, where several of the involved organizations are showcasing "made in Cuba" AI projects.
Meanwhile, the announcement reiterates the guidelines shared days earlier by the organizers of the artificial intelligence pavilion at Fihav, where the need to create solutions tailored to the Cuban context and to train models capable of understanding the national language was emphasized.
"We want to work on our own problems and within our contexts, so that artificial intelligence truly serves the Cuban economy and society," noted Rafael Luis Torralba, president of the Scientific and Technological Park of Havana, who emphasized the importance of training AI models adapted to the language and reality of the country.
In this regard, he referred to projects like "Cecilia," a generative AI developed by the University of Havana that aims to better understand the natural language of Cuban Spanish.
On the first day of FIHAV, which took place from the 24th to the 29th of this month, the ruling Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez stated that “holding a fair under the current conditions is an expression of our resilience and our concept of creative resistance.”
Despite the institutional enthusiasm, the announcement outlines a limited outlook: the consortium arises in an environment characterized by blackouts, unstable connectivity, and technological shortcomings that hinder any aspiration for sustained development.
Under these conditions, the integration of academic and business actors risks becoming more of a rhetorical showcase than a real driver of innovation.
A clear political dimension is also emerging. The consortium will serve as a tool to reinforce control and legitimacy, rather than as a catalyst for digital autonomy.
The State will leverage the "AI" label to project modernity and align itself with allied countries in international forums, while the population continues to lack access to basic services, in addition to suffering from censorship and a lack of freedom of expression.
There will be no development of AI without energy, connectivity, academic freedom, or genuine openness to the private sector. Until those conditions are in place, any announcement of "digital sovereignty" will, at best, be a mere image exercise; at worst, it will be another mechanism for centralizing power under a new guise.
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