KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

kay-marie.fletch­er

@guardian.co.tt

BEI­JING, CHI­NA—There’s no deny­ing that Chi­na is a glob­al pow­er­house when it comes to in­no­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy. Ro­bots play­ing in­stru­ments, or even blend­ing in as hu­mans, is no longer sur­pris­ing. In main­land Chi­na, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) isn’t just pow­er­ing fac­to­ries and apps—it’s be­ing taught in schools, in­te­grat­ed in­to health­care, and chang­ing the way peo­ple live.

While Chi­na surges ahead with hu­man-like ro­bots and AI-pow­ered cities, T&T is not there yet. But ac­cord­ing to Gov­ern­ment, T&T is qui­et­ly lay­ing the dig­i­tal foun­da­tions for its own AI rev­o­lu­tion.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and AI Min­is­ter Do­minic Smith re­vealed Gov­ern­ment is work­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to iden­ti­fy dig­i­tal gaps and as­sess T&T’s AI readi­ness.

“One of the steps that the gov­ern­ment has tak­en, based on the most re­cent Cab­i­net ap­proval, is to con­duct an AI readi­ness as­sess­ment,” Smith said.

“This will be car­ried out with key part­ners, in­clud­ing the UNDP and the IDB. We’re try­ing to de­ter­mine what the dig­i­tal gaps are. Based on those as­sess­ments, we’ll know which ar­eas to im­prove and in­vest in to en­able and cap­i­talise on AI tech­nol­o­gy for the coun­try, the gov­ern­ment, and the min­istry.”

Smith em­pha­sised that AI will al­so be in­te­grat­ed in­to the class­room.

“We have been co­or­di­nat­ing with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to ex­plore ini­tia­tives that will have an im­pact. AI in schools is very im­por­tant, from pri­ma­ry to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, look­ing at ways to im­prove the syl­labus and use tech­nol­o­gy in class­rooms, such as through lap­tops and AI soft­ware en­abled on these de­vices.”

The min­is­ter al­so high­light­ed plans for dig­i­tal IDs, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, and AI in pub­lic spaces.

“The dig­i­tal ID frame­work is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent. Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is es­sen­tial in the AI ecosys­tem, and da­ta gov­er­nance comes as a nat­ur­al ex­ten­sion. The min­istry is tak­ing proac­tive steps by us­ing open-source tech­nol­o­gy, build­ing ca­pac­i­ty, and pro­mot­ing open-source so­lu­tions across gov­ern­ment. In the medi­um term, with the up­com­ing bud­get, we’ll fo­cus on AI gov­er­nance and risk man­age­ment. A big part of our agen­da is al­so dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy and in­clu­sion.”

Even as Gov­ern­ment push­es for­ward, ex­perts warn of AI’s risks. Shi­va Bisses­sar, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Pina­ka Con­sult­ing Lim­it­ed, cau­tioned the pub­lic about AI deep­fakes.

“An AI agen­da must be bal­anced. While fos­ter­ing in­no­va­tion, we must mit­i­gate risks. One area is com­bat­ting AI deep­fakes, where a per­pe­tra­tor ap­plies a dig­i­tal mask to im­per­son­ate some­one else.

“These can be live videos, not just im­ages.

“Imag­ine a Zoom call where some­one pre­tends to be an­oth­er per­son, with the goal of steal­ing in­for­ma­tion, send­ing phish­ing links, or redi­rect­ing funds. This is one of many risks we need to con­sid­er as AI adop­tion grows.”

While coun­tries like Chi­na are al­ready see­ing AI be­come part of every­day life, Smith said his min­istry is prepar­ing to guide T&T in­to the dig­i­tal fu­ture, with more de­tails ex­pect­ed in the up­com­ing bud­get.