“AI isn’t re­plac­ing hu­man in­tel­li­gence—it’s re­defin­ing the val­ue of it.”

When most peo­ple hear the term ‘ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence’ (AI), they pic­ture self-dri­ving cars, voice as­sis­tants like Siri and Alexa, or chat­bots that gen­er­ate text on de­mand. These in­no­va­tions, while im­pres­sive, rep­re­sent on­ly a frac­tion of AI’s po­ten­tial. They per­form spe­cif­ic tasks re­mark­ably well, yet lack the flex­i­bil­i­ty and con­tex­tu­al aware­ness that de­fine hu­man in­tel­li­gence.

Ar­ti­fi­cial Gen­er­al In­tel­li­gence (AGI), by con­trast, refers to a the­o­ret­i­cal state in which com­put­er sys­tems achieve or ex­ceed hu­man-lev­el in­tel­li­gence. In sim­ple terms, AGI would not just per­form one spe­cial­ized task—it could un­der­stand, learn, and adapt across a wide range of ac­tiv­i­ties, just as hu­mans do.

This vi­sion of AGI has long been the stuff of sci­ence fic­tion nov­els, tele­vi­sion shows, and block­buster films. From 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000 to Ex Machi­na’s Ava, pop cul­ture has ex­plored what might hap­pen when ma­chines think and act like hu­mans. But out­side fic­tion, the glob­al tech­nol­o­gy com­mu­ni­ty is grap­pling with a press­ing ques­tion: How close are we to “true” ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, and what does it mean for so­ci­eties like ours in T&T?

Defin­ing AGI:

Be­yond nar­row AI

While the con­cept of AI has been around since the 1950s, there is no uni­ver­sal agree­ment on how we would for­mal­ly recog­nise AGI when it ar­rives. Nar­row AI sys­tems to­day can al­ready out­per­form hu­mans in ar­eas such as da­ta pro­cess­ing, chess, or med­ical im­age recog­ni­tion. But AGI is de­fined by breadth, it must repli­cate the ver­sa­til­i­ty of hu­man in­tel­li­gence.

The most fa­mous ap­proach to iden­ti­fy­ing whether a ma­chine is tru­ly in­tel­li­gent is the Tur­ing Test, al­so called the Im­i­ta­tion Game. First pro­posed in 1950 by Alan Tur­ing, the British math­e­mati­cian and com­put­er sci­en­tist of­ten re­gard­ed as the fa­ther of AI, the test places a hu­man in­ter­roga­tor in con­ver­sa­tion with both a hu­man and a ma­chine. If the in­ter­roga­tor can­not re­li­ably tell which is which, Tur­ing ar­gued, then the ma­chine could be said to “think.”

While the Tur­ing Test has its crit­ics, it re­mains a cor­ner­stone in dis­cus­sions about in­tel­li­gence and has in­flu­enced decades of AI de­vel­op­ment.

Where Are We Now?

The state of AI in 2025

Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion could add up to 6 per cent in GDP growth across Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean by 2030. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the glob­al AI mar­ket is ex­pect­ed to sur­pass US$300 bil­lion by 2026 (Sta­tista, 2025).

The Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness In­dex (WEF, 2024) ranks Trinidad and To­ba­go 76th glob­al­ly in tech­nol­o­gy readi­ness, high­light­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty for AI-dri­ven re­form.

Al­though AGI re­mains hy­po­thet­i­cal, nar­row AI is al­ready trans­form­ing the glob­al econ­o­my. Busi­ness­es, gov­ern­ments and con­sumers are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dra­mat­ic shifts in how work gets done:

• Glob­al mar­ket growth: Ac­cord­ing to PwC, AI could con­tribute up to $15.7 tril­lion to the glob­al econ­o­my by 2030, mak­ing it one of the biggest com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties in to­day’s world;

• Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty boosts: McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny es­ti­mates that AI could boost glob­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by 1.2 per cent an­nu­al­ly in the com­ing decade, the equiv­a­lent of adding tril­lions of dol­lars to GDP growth; and

• Job cre­ation and au­toma­tion: The World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum’s Fu­ture of Jobs Re­port (2023) pre­dicts AI and au­toma­tion will dis­place 85 mil­lion jobs world­wide by 2025, but al­so cre­ate 97 mil­lion new roles, par­tic­u­lar­ly in tech­nol­o­gy de­vel­op­ment, dig­i­tal ser­vices and green in­dus­tries.

Lo­cal­ly, while T&T is not yet a hub for AI de­vel­op­ment, the coun­try can­not re­main on the side­lines. Busi­ness­es across sec­tors such as en­er­gy, fi­nance, health­care and ed­u­ca­tion, are al­ready ex­plor­ing au­toma­tion tools to re­duce costs and im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy. The adop­tion of AI will in­flu­ence how com­pet­i­tive we re­main in the glob­al mar­ket­place.

How AI is al­ready in­creas­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy

Even with­out AGI, AI’s im­pact is un­de­ni­able. Here are a few ex­am­ples of how AI is in­creas­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty world­wide and why we should take no­tice in the Caribbean con­text:

1. Man­u­fac­tur­ing and En­er­gy AI sys­tems can mon­i­tor equip­ment in re­al time, pre­dict fail­ures and op­ti­mise en­er­gy con­sump­tion. McK­in­sey re­ports AI-dri­ven pre­dic­tive main­te­nance can re­duce un­planned down­time by up to 30 per cent in heavy in­dus­try. For a na­tion like Trinidad and To­ba­go, where en­er­gy is a key dri­ver of the econ­o­my, adopt­ing sim­i­lar sys­tems could sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy;

2. Health­care AI tools are be­ing used to de­tect dis­eases ear­li­er and im­prove di­ag­nos­tic ac­cu­ra­cy. For in­stance, AI-pow­ered imag­ing sys­tems have achieved 94–95 per cent ac­cu­ra­cy in iden­ti­fy­ing cer­tain can­cers, high­er than many hu­man ra­di­ol­o­gists.

Lo­cal­ly, with lim­it­ed ac­cess to spe­cial­ists in some re­gions, AI could help bridge health­care gaps;

3. Fi­nance AI al­go­rithms are mak­ing fraud de­tec­tion more re­li­able, pro­cess­ing mil­lions of trans­ac­tions per sec­ond to spot ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties. Ju­niper Re­search es­ti­mates that AI tech­nolo­gies will save banks ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$447 bil­lion through fraud pre­ven­tion and cus­tomer au­toma­tion be­tween 2023 and 2024. For T&T’s fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor, adopt­ing such tech­nolo­gies can strength­en cus­tomer trust and com­pet­i­tive­ness;

4. Ed­u­ca­tion AI-dri­ven plat­forms are en­abling per­son­al­ized learn­ing, help­ing stu­dents work at their own pace. UN­ESCO (2025) es­ti­mates AI in­te­gra­tion could im­prove learn­ing out­comes by 20–25 per cent in dig­i­tal­ly equipped class­rooms. The Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency (NTA) re­port­ed that on­ly 22 per cent of ter­tiary grad­u­ates have ad­vanced dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy skills (NTA, 2024). With T&T’s push for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in ed­u­ca­tion, these tools could en­hance stu­dent out­comes na­tion­wide.

Why Trinidad and To­ba­go Should Em­brace AI—and Pre­pare for AGI

On­ly 35 per cent of Caribbean SMEs cur­rent­ly use dig­i­tal tools at scale (World Bank, 2024). This sig­nals both a gap and an op­por­tu­ni­ty. T&T’s econ­o­my stands at a crit­i­cal cross­roads. While en­er­gy re­mains dom­i­nant, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion is nec­es­sary to re­main re­silient in the face of glob­al shifts. AI presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to trans­form in­dus­tries, in­crease ef­fi­cien­cy and cre­ate new mar­kets for in­no­va­tion.

Here’s why em­brac­ing AI now is es­sen­tial:

• Com­pet­i­tive­ness: Com­pa­nies that in­te­grate AI in­to op­er­a­tions will have an edge in glob­al sup­ply chains.

• Re­silience: AI can help in­dus­tries pre­dict dis­rup­tions—whether in en­er­gy, agri­cul­ture, or lo­gis­tics and re­spond proac­tive­ly.

• Job Trans­for­ma­tion: Rather than fear­ing AI, we must pre­pare work­ers for the new roles it will cre­ate. This re­quires in­vest­ment in train­ing, up­skilling and reskilling. World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum projects 44 per cent of glob­al work­ers’ skills will be dis­rupt­ed by 2027—un­der­scor­ing ur­gency for T&T’s work­force de­vel­op­ment.

• In­no­va­tion Ecosys­tem: En­cour­ag­ing lo­cal star­tups and uni­ver­si­ties to en­gage in AI re­search could po­si­tion T&T as a niche play­er in the Caribbean.

The even­tu­al ar­rival of AGI—if and when it hap­pens—will on­ly am­pli­fy these im­pacts. While ex­perts de­bate time­lines (some sug­gest decades, oth­ers longer), the prac­ti­cal step for T&T is to pre­pare now by adopt­ing AI re­spon­si­bly, build­ing reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works and fos­ter­ing a cul­ture of in­no­va­tion.

Eth­i­cal and So­cial Con­sid­er­a­tions

Of course, with op­por­tu­ni­ty comes re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The glob­al AI con­ver­sa­tion in­creas­ing­ly em­pha­sis­es ethics, fair­ness and ac­count­abil­i­ty. Ques­tions arise:

• If ma­chines can think and de­cide, who is re­spon­si­ble for their ac­tions?

• How do we pre­vent bias in AI sys­tems from deep­en­ing in­equal­i­ties?

• What guardrails are need­ed to en­sure da­ta pri­va­cy and se­cu­ri­ty?

The Gov­ern­ment’s Dig­i­tal Strat­e­gy 2024–2027 tar­gets 80% dig­i­ti­za­tion of pub­lic ser­vices by 2027. Em­bed­ding AI ethics in­to these sys­tems will en­sure cit­i­zens’ da­ta and trust re­main pro­tect­ed as au­toma­tion ex­pands.

Look­ing Ahead: Build­ing AI Aware­ness Lo­cal­ly

AI and AGI are not just tech­no­log­i­cal is­sues—they are so­ci­etal ones. Prepar­ing for this fu­ture re­quires col­lab­o­ra­tion across gov­ern­ment, busi­ness, acad­e­mia and civ­il so­ci­ety. Prac­ti­cal steps for Trinidad and To­ba­go could in­clude:

1. Na­tion­al AI Strat­e­gy: Craft­ing a clear pol­i­cy roadmap to guide AI adop­tion across in­dus­tries.

2. Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing: In­cor­po­rat­ing AI lit­er­a­cy in­to schools, uni­ver­si­ties, and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment pro­grams.

3. Pub­lic Aware­ness Cam­paigns: Help­ing cit­i­zens un­der­stand the op­por­tu­ni­ties and risks of AI, coun­ter­ing fear with knowl­edge.

4. Re­gion­al Col­lab­o­ra­tion: Part­ner­ing with CARI­COM states to build a Caribbean AI re­search and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work.

From Sci­ence Fic­tion to Strate­gic Im­per­a­tive

Ar­ti­fi­cial Gen­er­al In­tel­li­gence may still be­long to the fu­ture, but the build­ing blocks are al­ready here. AI is re­shap­ing in­dus­tries, re­defin­ing jobs and reimag­in­ing what economies can achieve. For T&T, the choice is clear: em­brace this wave of in­no­va­tion and pre­pare re­spon­si­bly, or risk be­ing left be­hind.

Alan Tur­ing once asked whether ma­chines can think. To­day, the more press­ing ques­tion for us is not whether they can, but whether we, as a na­tion, are think­ing strate­gi­cal­ly enough about how to har­ness their po­ten­tial.

If we be­gin the con­ver­sa­tion now—in­vest­ing in skills, fos­ter­ing in­no­va­tion and em­bed­ding ethics, we can en­sure that when AGI even­tu­al­ly emerges, Trinidad and To­ba­go will not just be spec­ta­tors, but ac­tive par­tic­i­pants shap­ing its fu­ture

Kirk Ram­per­sad is an ex­ec­u­tive, busi­ness and mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­al with over 25 years of ex­pe­ri­ence dri­ving strate­gic trans­for­ma­tion and rev­enue growth.

Email: kirkram@hot­mail.com LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kirk-ram­per­sad-mba-5ab5792