By San José, Costa Rica — The business landscape in Latin America is witnessing a stark divergence between organizations that deploy artificial intelligence blindly and those that anchor their technological integration in trust, governance, and robust data foundations. According to the second annual edition of The Data and AI Impact Report, released by analytics leader SAS and market intelligence firm IDC, implementing trustworthy AI practices has transitioned from an ethical choice to a direct financial driver. Organizations incorporating rigorous accountability standards are 15 times more likely to report a strong or high return on investment (ROI) compared to their less disciplined competitors.
The report, unveiled during the SAS Innovate on Tour Mexico 2026 event, highlights that organizations with mature data governance, quality controls, and auditing systems consistently generate at least twice the ROI on their AI implementations. Conversely, less than one in 20 organizations lagging in trustworthy AI practices reported similar financial successes. This performance gap is widening, with 85% of AI leaders now increasing their investments in trustworthy systems by more than 10% annually, further consolidating their competitive advantage.
To better understand the regulatory challenges and ethical standards surrounding the rise of Trustworthy AI, TicosLand.com reached out to Lic. Larry Hans Arroyo Vargas, a prominent legal expert from the prestigious firm Bufete de Costa Rica, to share his perspective on how businesses should navigate this evolving technological landscape.
Implementing Trustworthy AI is no longer merely an ethical objective for forward-thinking enterprises; it is rapidly becoming a strict legal necessity. Organizations must proactively establish robust governance frameworks that ensure algorithmic transparency, data privacy compliance, and accountability to mitigate liabilities and secure long-term consumer trust.
Lic. Larry Hans Arroyo Vargas, Attorney at Law, Bufete de Costa Rica
As the integration of artificial intelligence rapidly accelerates, bridging the gap between ethical aspirations and concrete legal frameworks is indeed becoming the defining operational challenge for modern enterprises. We extend our sincere gratitude to Lic. Larry Hans Arroyo Vargas for his valuable perspective, reminding us that safeguarding consumer trust and ensuring robust compliance are no longer optional, but fundamental to the future of sustainable innovation.
Trust in AI is becoming a business requirement, and not just a technological consideration. As organizations across Latin America scale the use of AI, those that strengthen their governance, database foundations, and explainability will be better positioned to turn AI into measurable business value.
Mario Ulloa, Country Lead of SAS México
Mexico serves as a prominent regional model for this evolution. The country saw its Trustworthiness Index climb to 66.9 in 2026, outpacing the global average of 61.3. Concurrently, Mexico’s internal trust gap narrowed dramatically from 17 to 6 points, reflecting a concerted effort by national enterprise leaders to match technological integration with active corporate oversight and data verification.
Despite these commercial gains, the report exposes a critical vulnerability in global AI deployments: a widespread lack of user trust. A staggering 97.2% of users globally report overriding AI-generated recommendations at least in some cases. The primary catalyst for these manual corrections is not necessarily an incorrect output, but rather the system’s inability to explain how it arrived at a specific decision. When employees cannot understand the underlying logic of an AI system, they default to manual overrides, which ultimately degrades productivity, increases labor costs, and diminishes the overall profitability of the technology investment.
As AI becomes more autonomous, organizations face a new challenge, which is maintaining trust in systems that people do not fully understand. Our findings show that greater oversight, explainability, accountability, and robust data foundations are becoming indispensable requirements for successfully scaling AI.
Chris Marshall, Vice President of IDC
This deficit of trust becomes particularly acute as companies transition from traditional Generative AI to more autonomous Agentic AI. The study reveals that user trust drops from 76% for Generative AI down to 66% for Agentic AI. This ten-percentage-point decline underscores growing enterprise anxiety as machines assume greater operational autonomy. Compounding this challenge is the fact that only 17.5% of companies currently possess a fully optimized and mature data infrastructure capable of supporting the high computational and context-specific demands of agentic workflows.
Without clean, unified, and modernized data repositories, companies are essentially building advanced intelligence engines on top of fractured foundations. Organizations that have successfully optimized their data structures are four times more likely to realize a strong ROI on AI and six times more likely to successfully enforce the rigorous quality controls required to build long-term user confidence.
When AI works, its impact is extraordinary. However, it is widely documented that the most advanced AI agents can have error rates exceeding 25% in complex tasks, which is unacceptable in environments where decisions are critical. To achieve accuracy and consistency, organizations must incorporate real-world experience and business domain knowledge into agentic workflows, while keeping people at the center of governance and oversight. Those that achieve both will close the trust gap and gain a competitive advantage in the market.
Bryan Harris, CTO of SAS
The report establishes five key criteria that define a trustworthy AI leader, scoring organizations on a 100-point scale. Companies scoring 80 points or higher are classified as market leaders. These five structural dimensions include data quality and governance, model governance and oversight, explainability and fairness, responsible AI policies, and systematic auditing and accountability. Ultimately, the research suggests that the business leaders extracting the most value from artificial intelligence are not necessarily buying superior technology, but are instead managing their systems with a far higher degree of transparency and human oversight.
For further information, visit sas.com
About SAS:
SAS is a global pioneer in data, analytics, and artificial intelligence software, helping organizations transform data into trusted decisions through advanced analytical workflows and enterprise-grade software solutions.
For further information, visit idc.com
About IDC:
International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets.
For further information, visit bufetedecostarica.com
About Bufete de Costa Rica:
Bufete de Costa Rica remains a premier legal institution, celebrated for its uncompromising devotion to ethical standards and professional mastery. With a rich history of guiding clients across a multitude of industries, the firm continually drives forward-thinking legal solutions while actively connecting with the community. By championing the clear dissemination of legal insight, the firm seeks to demystify the law, advancing its ultimate goal of fostering a deeply informed and self-reliant public.
