Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Ali­cia Pauline Lalite-Et­ti­enne has raised con­cerns that the use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) in prepar­ing doc­u­ments ac­com­pa­ny­ing the 2027 Na­tion­al Bud­get may be cre­at­ing bar­ri­ers for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, warn­ing that tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments must not come at the ex­pense of ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and in­clu­sion.

Sen­a­tor Lalite-Et­ti­enne, who is vi­su­al­ly im­paired, told the Up­per House dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Bud­get de­bate that her screen-read­ing soft­ware re­peat­ed­ly iden­ti­fied the doc­u­ments she re­ceived as AI-gen­er­at­ed, but strug­gled to make the in­for­ma­tion ac­ces­si­ble to her.

“The for­mat, every­thing, all the con­tent was cre­at­ed with ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence,” she said.

“And my screen read­er was telling me every­thing. Ar­ti­fi­cial, AI-gen­er­at­ed, AI-gen­er­at­ed and graph­ics.”

Her re­marks prompt­ed an in­ter­ven­tion from Sen­a­tor Dar­rel Al­la­har, who sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion on pre­cise­ly which doc­u­ments she was re­fer­ring to.

“She’s made an ac­cu­sa­tion about the bud­get be­ing done by AI, and we wouldn’t want the pop­u­la­tion to go away with the wrong im­pres­sion,” Al­la­har told the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent af­ter re­quest­ing that Lalite-Et­ti­enne give way.

He asked the sen­a­tor to iden­ti­fy which parts of the Bud­get had al­leged­ly been pro­duced us­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.

Lalite-Et­ti­enne main­tained that near­ly all the doc­u­ments she re­ceived, ex­cept the Min­is­ter’s fi­nal state­ment, had been iden­ti­fied as AI-gen­er­at­ed by her screen read­er.

She of­fered to open the orig­i­nal doc­u­ments on her com­put­er to demon­strate what the soft­ware was re­port­ing.

“I will not come here un­less I have facts,” she said.

The sen­a­tor ex­plained that her ex­pe­ri­ence ac­cess­ing the Bud­get doc­u­ments il­lus­trat­ed the wider chal­lenges per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties could face as the Gov­ern­ment in­creas­ing­ly em­braces ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and digi­ti­sa­tion.

She re­vealed that staff at the Sen­ate Sec­re­tari­at and Par­lia­ment’s In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy De­part­ment spent con­sid­er­able time at­tempt­ing to make por­tions of the doc­u­ments ac­ces­si­ble to her.

While prais­ing their ef­forts, Lalite-Et­ti­enne said the de­lays re­strict­ed her abil­i­ty to in­de­pen­dent­ly ex­am­ine the Bud­get and con­duct re­search, forc­ing her to nar­row the scope of her par­lia­men­tary con­tri­bu­tion.

The sen­a­tor said she had not ex­pe­ri­enced sim­i­lar dif­fi­cul­ties dur­ing the pre­vi­ous year’s Bud­get de­bate and stressed that she was not ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of de­lib­er­ate­ly ex­clud­ing per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties.

Rather, Lalite-Et­ti­enne used her ex­pe­ri­ence to high­light what she con­sid­ered a crit­i­cal gap be­tween the Gov­ern­ment’s am­bi­tions for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and the prac­ti­cal needs of cit­i­zens who de­pend on as­sis­tive tech­nol­o­gy.

Turn­ing her at­ten­tion to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, she wel­comed the ex­pan­sion of dig­i­tal ser­vices and AI ini­tia­tives but cau­tioned that ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty must be built in­to those sys­tems from the out­set.

“It would be re­al­ly good if per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties could be in­clud­ed in the train­ing pro­grammes that you all are rolling out, and all the ini­tia­tives for 2027,” she said.