GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The in­au­gur­al Fu­jit­su Ac­ti­vateNow, glob­al flag­ship event opened with a uni­fied call to ac­tion, as Do­minic Smith, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, and Mervyn Eyre, CEO of Fu­jit­su Caribbean, urged the re­gion to em­brace dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion with ur­gency, strat­e­gy and col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Un­der the theme ‘Pow­er­ing Re­gion­al Progress – Tech­nol­o­gy, Trust and Trans­for­ma­tion,’ the event which took place at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day con­vened re­gion­al lead­ers, in­no­va­tors, and change­mak­ers to ex­plore how dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is dri­ving na­tion­al re­silience and sus­tain­able growth.

Smith agreed the three pil­lars of tech­nol­o­gy, trust, and trans­for­ma­tion es­sen­tial to re­gion­al progress as he called for eq­ui­table ac­cess to dig­i­tal tools, ro­bust da­ta gov­er­nance, and hu­man-cen­tric in­no­va­tion. Cit­ing a Unit­ed Na­tions re­port, he warned that AI could dis­rupt up to 38 per cent of the labour mar­ket with­in five years, urg­ing im­me­di­ate ac­tion to up­skill and em­pow­er Caribbean cit­i­zens.

He called for strate­gic col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween gov­ern­ments and the pri­vate sec­tor to en­sure eq­ui­table ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy, ro­bust da­ta gov­er­nance and hu­man-cen­tric in­no­va­tion.

Smith al­so stressed the im­por­tance of dig­i­tal eq­ui­ty across all com­mu­ni­ties, from Port-of-Spain to To­co.

“It must be tan­gi­ble, it must be re­al for all of us be­cause if we’re not speak­ing about the eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of tech­nol­o­gy, then we are re­al­ly not par­tic­i­pat­ing glob­al­ly in what that po­ten­tial can be, so I want to speak about tech­nol­o­gy,” he said.

On the is­sue of trust, Smith said there could be no trans­for­ma­tion with­out trust.

“When we’re speak­ing about con­cepts such as da­ta, it re­quires a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty from you and I be­cause as a pri­vate cit­i­zen you must trust the in­di­vid­u­als that har­ness and utilise and se­cure your in­for­ma­tion to use it in your best in­ter­ests. That’s a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment but it’s al­so a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of our part­ners like Fu­jit­su, like oth­er stake­hold­ers here where we pro­vide the gold of the fu­ture, which is our da­ta, to com­pa­nies to make our lives in­her­ent­ly bet­ter,” the min­is­ter ex­plained.

Echo­ing the min­is­ter’s mes­sage, Eyre pre­sent­ed find­ings from an AI-dri­ven re­gion­al analy­sis of chal­lenges fac­ing Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos and Trinidad.

“Lim­it­ed ac­cess to fund­ing to do some of the ini­tia­tives that we have, al­so pri­vate ac­cess to fund­ing, slow dig­i­tal adop­tion and reg­u­la­to­ry change, re­al is­sues that we need to deal with, so­cial sta­bil­i­ty, crime in Ja­maica, crime in Trinidad, re­al things we need to tack­le, slow di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, the time it’s tak­ing for us to move from our her­itage in­dus­tries, which we need to di­ver­si­fy from with speed. Ca­pa­bil­i­ty gaps, a big is­sue, and that com­bined with the adop­tion of dig­i­tal is caus­ing us pre­dic­tiv­i­ty gaps. And of course, in all of this is the rapid ad­vance­ments of AI,” Eyre said, as he out­lined as among the top con­cerns.

Eyre reaf­firmed Fu­jit­su’s com­mit­ment to Caribbean pros­per­i­ty, high­light­ing the com­pa­ny’s 70-year lega­cy in the re­gion and its evolv­ing role from sys­tems in­te­gra­tor to sus­tain­abil­i­ty part­ner.

“Our pur­pose is to make the world more sus­tain­able by build­ing trust in so­ci­ety through in­no­va­tion,” he said.

Eyre stressed that the ul­ti­mate val­ue of AI and tech­nol­o­gy would not come from in­di­vid­ual ef­forts or si­los, but from strate­gic col­lab­o­ra­tion and cre­at­ing ro­bust ecosys­tems built on so­cial trust.