There is an ur­gent need for strate­gic over­sight in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean con­cern­ing the adop­tion of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI). To ad­dress this, Pro­fes­sor Renée Cum­mings is prepar­ing GOV­ERN™, an ex­ec­u­tive blue­print for lead­ing con­fi­dent­ly, gov­ern­ing re­spon­si­bly and thriv­ing in the age of AI.

Cum­mings, who had been well known for many years as a crim­i­nol­o­gist in T&T, is cur­rent­ly a pro­fes­sor of prac­tice at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia School of Da­ta Sci­ence, while al­so serv­ing as a non-res­i­dent se­nior fel­low and co-di­rec­tor of the AI Eq­ui­ty Lab at the Brook­ings In­sti­tu­tion and co-chair of the Glob­al Aca­d­e­m­ic Net­work at the Cen­tre for AI and Dig­i­tal Pol­i­cy (CAIDP).

She has used her ex­per­tise in the field of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence to ad­vise peo­ple around the world on the tech­nol­o­gy’s us­age, but is hop­ing that T&T will heed the ad­vice as well.

“Na­tion­al AI readi­ness doesn’t be­gin with gov­ern­ment. It be­gins in­side every or­gan­i­sa­tion. The or­gan­i­sa­tions that gov­ern AI well will help shape the fu­ture of their coun­tries. The ones that don’t, may shape its next cri­sis,” she said, “To­day, every or­gan­i­sa­tion is part of a na­tion’s AI in­fra­struc­ture. Every or­gan­i­sa­tion, there­fore, has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to gov­ern AI re­spon­si­bly. That’s why every or­gan­i­sa­tion needs GOV­ERN™.”

Cum­mings ex­plained the acronym has the fol­low­ing mean­ing:

G: Gov­er­nance;

O: Over­sight;

V: Val­ue Cre­ation;

E: Ethics & Ac­count­abil­i­ty;

R: Risk Man­age­ment; and

N: Na­tion­al & Or­gan­i­sa­tion­al Readi­ness.

She not­ed that T&T has es­tab­lished a ded­i­cat­ed min­istry for ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, which is seek­ing to pro­mote a na­tion­al AI strat­e­gy and the full en­act­ment of da­ta pro­tec­tion laws.

“T&T has a Min­istry of AI. T&T has com­mit­ted an ex­tra­or­di­nary amount of re­sources to AI, but the coun­try does not have a na­tion­al AI strat­e­gy, and it is one of the few coun­tries in the world try­ing to stand up AI tools and AI sys­tems, and to in­te­grate AI in­to the way gov­ern­ment does busi­ness, but it doesn’t have a na­tion­al strat­e­gy to reg­u­late the tech­nol­o­gy,” Cum­mings said in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian.

“When it comes to T&T, we have done some­thing very nov­el, which is, as I said, we’ve cre­at­ed this this min­istry, and this min­istry has the abil­i­ty to do tru­ly ex­tra­or­di­nary things, be­cause the min­istry re­al­ly sets up T&T as a lead­ing voice now in the re­gion when it comes to AI and with­in the world. That is be­cause not many coun­tries have a Min­istry of AI, so we’ve put our­selves in a re­mark­able po­si­tion when it comes to AI. What we don’t have is the foun­da­tion. “

She warned that with­out so­phis­ti­cat­ed gov­er­nance, the in­her­ent bi­as­es and risks found in his­tor­i­cal da­ta can lead to sys­temic harm and a loss of pub­lic trust.

She point­ed to the Dutch child­care ben­e­fits scan­dal, al­so known as “the toes­la­ge­naf­faire,” as one such ex­am­ple. In Jan­u­ary 2021, the cab­i­net of Prime Min­is­ter Mark Rutte re­signed af­ter a re­port found that an au­to­mat­ed al­go­rithm used by the tax au­thor­i­ties had wrong­ly ac­cused thou­sands of fam­i­lies of fraud, based on dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pro­files.

Cum­mings stressed that while AI does of­fer im­mense re­wards for ef­fi­cien­cy and ex­cel­lence, most peo­ple lack a so­phis­ti­cat­ed un­der­stand­ing of its risks, which stem from the fact that AI is built on da­ta which can be im­per­fect or bi­ased.

Con­sid­er­ing this, she made the call for the full en­act­ment of the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act of 2012 to safe­guard the coun­try against AI risks.

“To get AI right, T&T has what is called the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act of 2012, which has not been ful­ly en­act­ed. We have got to en­act that in its fullest, be­cause there is no AI with­out da­ta. So if you don’t get your da­ta right, you are nev­er go­ing to get your AI right. And get­ting our da­ta pro­tec­tion right means that we’re al­so go­ing to be safe­guard­ing our coun­try, our work­ers, our in­dus­tries, our stu­dents, every­body in T&T when it comes to the risks of AI.”

She said that any or­gan­i­sa­tion adopt­ing this tech­nol­o­gy must do so with­in a gov­er­nance frame­work that ad­dress­es ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, fair­ness and eq­ui­ty.

“So how do you gov­ern this tech­nol­o­gy? How do you pro­cure this tech­nol­o­gy? How do you han­dle this tech­nol­o­gy with a risk man­age­ment and a cri­sis man­age­ment ap­proach? How do you deal with the over­sights? How do you deal with things like ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, fair­ness and eq­ui­ty? These are big ques­tions in the world of AI,” she said.

Cum­mings al­so ad­dressed con­cerns that AI could lead to un­em­ploy­ment in­creas­es, as she stat­ed that the tech­nol­o­gy will on­ly take jobs from those who fail to up­skill. She urged in­di­vid­u­als to be­come ir­re­place­able by be­com­ing AI lit­er­ate and en­sur­ing they bring a hu­man-cen­tred ap­proach to how the tech­nol­o­gy is de­ployed.

Last De­cem­ber, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in­tro­duced the Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence In­no­va­tion Cen­tre (AI­IC)

Dr Craig Ram­lal, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the AI­IC, told the Busi­ness Guardian then that work would be done at the cen­tre to study strate­gies to em­bold­en many of T&T’s top in­dus­tries through the use of AI.

Cum­mings said this was a pos­i­tive step as she not­ed that this coun­try lags be­hind in in­no­va­tion readi­ness, rank­ing rough­ly 105th in the Glob­al AI Readi­ness In­dex. She al­so added that most strate­gies built around AI do not con­sid­er our re­gion.

“Tech­nol­o­gy can re­al­ly help our econ­o­my, help our na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, help build the in­tel­lec­tu­al ro­bust­ness of our so­ci­ety, and we need to think about the things that could be un­der­mined be­cause of AI.

“If we think of our cre­atives, if we think of our imag­i­na­tion econ­o­my, if we think of our ca­lyp­so and so­ca in­dus­try, and how AI could re­al­ly un­der­mine many of the jobs, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the cre­ative sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly some of the jobs that women do, how AI can im­pact our ed­u­ca­tion in a neg­a­tive way as well, be­cause much of the knowl­edge in AI is re­al­ly Eu­ro­cen­tric and Amer­i­can­ised knowl­edge, as op­posed to some­thing that is more in­clu­sive and some­thing is more di­verse,” she said.

How­ev­er, with the Min­istry and the AI­IC, Cum­mings said T&T can pos­si­bly be­come a leader for change in the re­gion with GOV­ERN help­ing the coun­try along that path.