When some teenagers in Uruguay dreamed of becoming soccer players or simply wanted to learn to play guitar, Nicolás Jodal was already deeply involved in inventions like homemade rockets and even a gamma‑ray camera, which he built together with his friend Gustavo Proto, who years later would be part of GeneXus’s first working team and of the history of the First GeneXus Meeting.

Many of those projects didn’t work. But for Jodal, what always mattered was trying, even if it could go wrong.

Today, as Co‑founder and CEO of GeneXus, he is still guided by his curiosity. In an interview with Paula Scorza and Emilio Izaguirre on the Uruguayan program 12 PM
(Azul FM), he shared his vision on innovation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), education, work, and nature.

This content is based on that unmissable interview:

About GeneXus

GeneXus: A Global Dream Born in Uruguay

Forty years ago, when artificial intelligence was still an incipient concept, Breogán Gonda (Chief Technology Advisor) and Nicolás Jodal (CEO), cofounders of GeneXus, decided to bet on the potential of this technology to create something truly disruptive: a platform capable of automating everything automatable at every stage of software development, simplifying processes, speeding up time, and boosting developer productivity.

Nicolás Jodal and Breogán Gonda, GeneXus.

From its beginnings, GeneXus had an ambitious objective: to be a global solution from day one. But achieving global reach in the 1980s was far from easy.

“We couldn’t make international calls. Each one required a special request and was extremely expensive. Contacts abroad were by fax… and we didn’t even have one. We’d go super happy to pick them up at an Antel office (Uruguay’s telecommunications company) in Ciudad Vieja (Montevideo),” Jodal recalls with humor.

From the start, they made a strategic decision: GeneXus had to be in English, because their vision was to export technology, not limit themselves to the local market.

Today, GeneXus is also available in Spanish and Japanese. Its new edition, GeneXus Next, even allows interaction in natural language in any language in the world, breaking down linguistic limitations.

With its main market in Japan, GeneXus – which since 2022 is part of Globant – is used by a community of over 150,000 registered users and active clients, among which companies like Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, CRRC Electric, Jalpak, Bantotal, Resona Holding, the Panama Canal, among many others, stand out.

GeneXus’s headquarters are in Montevideo, Uruguay, and it has offices in Brazil, Mexico, Japan, and the United States, as well as official distributors in over 100 countries around the world.

How GeneXus Helped During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Days before the pandemic was officially declared in Uruguay, Nicolás Jodal was already talking with others about the need to give a fast and effective digital response to the problem. One of the first things they anticipated was that, amid panic, the phone lines of health centers would be the first to collapse.

That was how Coronavirus UY was born, an app developed in just one week with GeneXus, and created by a multidisciplinary team from different companies, under Jodal’s leadership.

The app was used by more than 3 million people, becoming a true milestone for the software industry in Uruguay and a concrete demonstration of the country’s ability to create digital solutions with global impact.

This Critical Mission System offered essential services such as:

• Official and up‑to‑date information about the pandemic
• Remote medical care (telemedicine)
• Personalized alerts for exposure to the virus

Thanks to its effectiveness, Coronavirus UY became a fundamental pillar of the Uruguayan government’s digital strategy in facing COVID‑19.

In recognition of his social and technological contribution, Nicolás Jodal was awarded the “500 Years Straits of Magellan” Prize, granted by the Government of Chile.

Nicolás Jodal at a press conference alongside Álvaro Delgado, Secretary of the Presidency | Photo: Presidency of Uruguay

AI According to Jodal: It Doesn’t Think, But It Impresses

For Jodal, the arrival of Generative Artificial Intelligence is as revolutionary as the Internet or mobile phones were in their time. However, he warns: “The most important thing is to understand that the machine doesn’t think, doesn’t have values, doesn’t understand anything. It only predicts the next word.”

About how AI works, he confesses that it’s something so complicated that even the researchers who created the Large Language Models do not understand it precisely, and that’s why it’s so fascinating. Jodal explains that millions of digital books and trillions of words were loaded into the AI, so what it does is follow sequences of text, imitating human conversations, but without really understanding the content.

“It’s like a parrot that repeats what it heard. It doesn’t have memory, but it creates the illusion that it does. So when we ask it about any topic, its answers are following a sequence that someone, somewhere, once wrote. It has no values, it doesn’t think. Yet, it behaves like it’s a human being on the other side of the screen, and that creates what I call, instead of an optical illusion, a mental illusion. It is the first time in human history that we can have coherent conversations with a being that is not intelligent, nor has memory. That is, if I say, do you remember what I asked you the other day? It’s not going to remember. But if you ask it within the same conversation, it will search in that knowledge it has stored and answer you. So you have the illusion that it remembers, but it didn’t remember.”

Should We Greet the AI?

Jodal has a firm (and fun!) position on this:

“Greeting and saying goodbye to AI is unnecessary. It’s a fight I have with my daughter. The other day I said, Agustina, tell me, do you greet the blender? You get in the car and greet it. No, you don’t greet it, because it’s a machine that doesn’t remember you, and it doesn’t think anything about you. Also, there’s a trick in all artificial intentions for final consumptions, which is that they’re made to please. Then you like it and that’s why you say thank you. But no, it’s a machine.”

Can We Trust AI?

“No, you can’t trust AI because it’s a machine that has the capacity to hallucinate, to invent things. When you ask it something it doesn’t know, the most likely thing is that instead of telling you it doesn’t know, it’ll invent it. It’s a sham. And that’s part of the machine. It’s not an error. There is a way to take away its ability to hallucinate, which is called lowering the temperature. It’s like turning down the machine’s fever. But if you do that, it stops being human. What’s important is not to trust 100% what the machine tells you. You have to have critical thinking. That’s why education is super important. Now more than ever we must be prepared to know what is true and what is false.”

Education in Times of AI: More Needed Than Ever

Jodal asserts that what used to be scarce – writing well, with correct spelling, grammar, and style – is now abundant and accessible to everyone thanks to Generative AI [you might be interested in reading this whitepaper: Business Applications of Generative AI].

“More than prohibiting these technologies, you have to teach how to use them in a critical and responsible way… And this is something that already happened to mathematics. It’s fine that people learn to do arithmetic, but no one now has you manually divide three‑digit numbers and things like that, because calculators do it automatically. Every time a new technology comes, there are parts of our brain development that become less relevant, but others become much more important, and the brain adapts to that. What will happen is that we’ll know how to write less, but we’ll have a reach of thought – or to have ideas and put them into practice – that we didn’t have before.”

Is AI Going to Leave Us Without Jobs?

“My answer is yes and no. There will be work, but it won’t be the same, we’ll do other things, and we’ll do much more. In big numbers there is work for everyone. Whenever a new machine appears, the fear of that new machine automatically arises. Which is also reasonable. In the case of Generative AI, this happens because of thinking it has some kind of human brain, and it is not so.”

Like any technological revolution, this one generates fear. And that is normal. But it is also a huge source of opportunities.

“The large tech companies were born in times of crisis. Amazon, for example, emerged in 1993, when the Internet was just starting as a scientific network. But someone used it to sell books.”

Jodal’s message is clear: those who adapt, find opportunities. Those who resist, fall behind.

The Future of AI: More Voice, Fewer Keyboards

Looking ahead, Jodal envisions a world where interfaces cease to be screens and keyboards: “Everything is heading toward conversation. My car already works by voice, and I believe the next generation of systems will be more conversational.”

Technology will continue to advance, and we must be prepared to speak, not just type.

Jodal’s practical tips for using AI in everyday life

• “Use ChatGPT, GROK or Gemini instead of Google.”
• “The clearer your question, the better the answer.”
• “You don’t have to train the machine; we need to train ourselves to ask better questions.”
• “For deeper research, use the Deep Research button. For example, I started playing paddle and needed to buy good shoes so that my Achilles heel wouldn’t hurt. I asked for a Deep Research search. It took longer, but it returned excellent results, analyzing about 200 sites in a few minutes.”

Beyond Technology: Strength, Nature, and Rewilding

Although he’s at the center of the tech world, Jodal also seeks balance outside the screen. He loves strength training, walks to think, and his rewilding project in Uruguay.

“I like doing things that scare me. It motivates me. I race cars, I deadlift 157 kilos… and yes, it’s scary. I’m always on the edge of the blade.”

He has a marked routine, with weekly workouts in his home gym: “By nature I’m quite messy, so I need to force myself to have routines. Training is a good example: I do it three times a week, always at the same time. That consistency helps me maintain balance. I have a very simple home gym: a barbell and some iron plates. I do strength training with that. To organize my routines I use an app that I developed myself.”

Mornings are his most productive time: “I try to reserve mornings for tasks that require greater concentration: thinking, reading or programming. That’s why I try not to schedule meetings early. Most of my meetings I organize in the afternoon, leaving the morning free for deeper work.”

He also collaborates with the organization Ambá on rewilding projects, aiming to restore species like the
venado de campo
(Uruguayan brown deer), which once had a population of 20 million in Uruguay, but today only about 600 remain.

“I’m very interested in nature and, in particular, rewilding. It’s about returning lands to nature that were formerly used for production, in order to restore ecosystems. My idea is to support initiatives that allow the recovery of local wildlife.”

In capsules

Nicolás Jodal has multiple facets that combine innovation, critical thinking, and a deep outlook on the future. Here’s some curious and relevant information about him:

1. He is an engineer, but also a great communicator

Although he studied Systems Engineering at the University of the Republic (Uruguay), Jodal stands out for his ability to communicate complex ideas simply. His talks and interviews are often full of metaphors, humor, and clarity that connect equally with technical and non‑technical audiences. Here are some of his presentations:

• 
  AI Strategic
  | Chile Fintech Forum 2025
• 
  Enterprise Low-Code Meets GenAI
• 
  What’s Going on with AI? What’s Next?
• 
  Cruza los cables
• 
  Bantotal Meetup | Inteligencia Artificial Generativa
• 
  Inteligencia Artificial: 30 años de fracaso y 3 meses de éxito
• 
  Forbes Revolución Fintech Summit: “Oportunidades ‘fin’ y ‘tech’
• 4 Vitaminas Para Las Organizaciones | TEDxMontevideo

2. He was a pioneer of Low‑Code and AI before they became global trends

When he founded GeneXus in the 80s, the concept of Low‑Code didn’t exist, and little was said about AI. However, the platform he created (together with Breogán Gonda) aimed precisely at that: automating software development to make it easier and accelerate processes, reducing the need to write code manually.

3. He has a strong connection with Japan

Although GeneXus is a Uruguayan product, its main market is Japan. The platform is highly valued in that country for its reliability, automation, and logical and long‑term approach (future‑proof). Jodal has traveled many times to Japan and deeply understands its technological culture.

4. He was a university professor

Jodal has a profound respect for education and for a time worked as a professor at the Catholic University of Uruguay and as a tutor for database courses in Brazil. Although he no longer teaches classes, he maintains a strong connection to academia.

5. He is the businessman with the best reputation in Uruguay

For several consecutive years, he has been recognized as the businessman with the best reputation in Uruguay, in the Merco Empresas y Líderes Uruguay 2023/24 ranking, published by the Corporate Reputation Monitor (Merco).

You may also be interested in reading:

How events transform organizations

Curiosities of the First GeneXus Meeting (+ photos and video)

10 Questions to Nicolás Jodal