Trade, In­vest­ment, and Tourism Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj has urged busi­ness­peo­ple to em­brace ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) as a tool to boost glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness and cre­ate new op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Speak­ing at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Southex In­ter­na­tion­al Ex­po at C3 Mall in San Fer­nan­do on Wednes­day, Ma­haraj said AI adop­tion is es­sen­tial for com­pa­nies seek­ing to cut costs, ex­pand mar­kets, and strength­en op­er­a­tions.

He cit­ed his own ex­pe­ri­ence with Sascha Cos­met­ics, which used AI tools dur­ing the pan­dem­ic to re­duce op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es by 30 per cent. “We al­so lever­aged AI in cus­tomer ser­vice and hu­man re­sources, where au­toma­tion trans­formed how tasks were man­aged,” he said.

Re­flect­ing on his busi­ness jour­ney, Ma­haraj spoke about launch­ing Sascha Cos­met­ics in south Trinidad and lat­er ex­pand­ing through e-com­merce and dig­i­tal plat­forms. He re­called the ear­ly chal­lenges of op­er­at­ing with­out ba­sic com­mu­ni­ca­tion in­fra­struc­ture, fol­lowed by the trans­for­ma­tive im­pact of the in­ter­net and the rise of plat­forms like Ama­zon and Google, which rev­o­lu­tionised how prod­ucts are sold glob­al­ly.

“While the in­ter­net was trans­for­ma­tive, AI rep­re­sents an even larg­er shift that will af­fect how peo­ple live, work, and con­duct busi­ness,” Ma­haraj said. He ac­knowl­edged that while some jobs will dis­ap­pear, new roles and mar­kets will al­so emerge.

The min­is­ter said Trinidad and To­ba­go, with its skilled pop­u­la­tion and ex­po­sure to glob­al mar­kets, is well po­si­tioned to lever­age AI for growth. He en­cour­aged con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in AI ed­u­ca­tion and the mod­erni­sa­tion of pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion to en­sure the coun­try re­mains com­pet­i­tive.

Sup­port­ing this call, Nigel Ro­mano, chair­man of the Caribbean Cor­po­rate Gov­er­nance In­sti­tute, de­scribed AI as “the defin­ing tech­nol­o­gy of our era.”

Ro­mano, who has over 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in bank­ing, out­lined four key ways AI is re­shap­ing busi­ness: en­rich­ing em­ploy­ee ex­pe­ri­ences, rein­vent­ing cus­tomer en­gage­ment, re­shap­ing busi­ness process­es, and ac­cel­er­at­ing in­no­va­tion. “AI is not re­plac­ing hu­man in­tel­li­gence. It is am­pli­fy­ing it,” he said.

How­ev­er, Ro­mano al­so cau­tioned that the po­ten­tial risks must be care­ful­ly man­aged. “AI sys­tems can per­pet­u­ate and am­pli­fy ex­ist­ing so­ci­etal bi­as­es,” he warned, cit­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ex­am­ples in re­cruit­ment and health­care where un­equal out­comes have oc­curred. He stressed the need for re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion, trans­paren­cy, and reg­u­la­tion to en­sure AI adop­tion aligns with Caribbean val­ues.

“The choic­es we make to­day about AI adop­tion, gov­er­nance, and im­ple­men­ta­tion will shape the tra­jec­to­ry of our busi­ness­es, our com­mu­ni­ties, and our re­gion for decades to come,” he added.

Mean­while, Shi­va Bisses­sar, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Pina­ka Con­sult­ing Lim­it­ed, demon­strat­ed how Deep­fake tech­nol­o­gy can be used both to iden­ti­fy and to ex­ploit vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty. He warned that many busi­ness­peo­ple re­main un­aware of the grow­ing threats posed by evolv­ing cy­ber­at­tacks.

“We’ve seen some of these at­tacks hap­pen­ing even with­out deep­fakes, and now this is a new evo­lu­tion of at­tacks us­ing deep­fakes,” he ex­plained. “The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty needs to wake up to the threats out there. We’ve seen it hap­pen­ing in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions, and it’s on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore it takes place here.”

Bisses­sar point­ed out that fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions have al­ready lost sig­nif­i­cant sums to email and What­sApp scams. “We have al­so seen ran­somware at­tacks. Deep­fake at­tacks have oc­curred else­where, and lo­cal busi­ness­es must pre­pare now,” he added.