We live in a frac­tured world that is spin­ning ever so faster. Old en­gage­ments in Tianan­men Square, Koso­vo, Viet­nam, and the first Gulf War pale to what por­tends in Ukraine, Gaza, Tai­wan, Su­dan, Myan­mar, the DRC, Haiti, Sa­hel, and Afghanistan.

The year 2026 will be a col­lec­tion of diplo­mat­ic ma­noeu­vres to ad­dress the prospect of “civil­i­sa­tion­al era­sure”, the cut­ting of un­der­sea ca­bles that car­ry elec­tron­ic traf­fic, drones that test de­fences, and DOS at­tacks that put emer­gency ser­vices and crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture out of op­er­a­tion.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er fore­sees our tech­no­log­i­cal pow­er­less­ness and in­abil­i­ty to find the still point in a turn­ing world. Pow­er has even tak­en away the Adam­ic task to name our world. With­out mon­u­ments, bat­tles and mar­tyrs, what re­mains in the West In­dies are colon­nades of coral and sea fans, those en­dur­ing reefs of mem­o­ry that are home to our cul­ture and post­colo­nial iden­ti­ty.

We are wit­ness­es to the eter­nal, slow and in­vis­i­ble work of the polyp build­ing the Buc­coo Reef, sur­ren­der­ing al­ways to the sea’s pow­er in acts of cre­ation and de­struc­tion. The wav­ing sea fans sig­nalling to us from the deep the im­per­ma­nence of the things we build, in­clud­ing our iden­ti­ty. It is a con­tin­u­ous process of build­ing and re­build­ing in the West In­dies. 

Every at­tempt is a com­plete­ly new start, and a dif­fer­ent kind of dis­ap­point­ment. And this at­tempt is no dif­fer­ent from the be­gin­ning of pri­or end­ings. Like Sisy­phus, our pun­ish­ment is to be con­demned to eter­nal­ly push a boul­der up­hill, on­ly for it to roll back down.

This is our strug­gle, but as Ca­mus sug­gests, we find mean­ing and even joy in the very act of push­ing the stone in re­bel­lion against the fu­til­i­ty of push­ing it up­hill. Rolling it up the hill speaks to our con­di­tion of striv­ing and find­ing pur­pose in the strug­gle it­self, not just the out­come. 

In the age of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI), we find our­selves at the edge of a new hu­man­i­ty, where the work of each is im­por­tant to the whole. Lead­ers must not see them­selves as planters tend­ing their own plot. Rather, the in­fos­phere rev­o­lu­tion calls up­on them to be the leav­en of re­gion­al fra­ter­ni­ty among dif­fer­ent publics, faiths, and na­tions.

Lead­ers in the re­gion must wit­ness whole­heart­ed­ly the low­li­ness of the poor, the lost, the un­seem­ly, the ne­glect­ed, the over­looked, the bro­ken, the ex­clud­ed, and the weak. On­ly then can we ad­dress in­her­it­ed in­equal­i­ty, in­ter­gen­er­a­tional im­mo­bil­i­ty and oth­er de­vel­op­ment traps.

If we avoid it, the risk is to fall in­to rigid­i­ty. If de­vel­op­ment is free­dom, then we must be at­ten­tive to the poor­est from be­hind a veil of ig­no­rance. Vac­il­lat­ing be­tween uni­for­mi­ty that fails to ac­cept dif­fer­ences or the ex­ac­er­ba­tion of per­spec­tives in­stead of find­ing a com­mon ground are temp­ta­tions that we must avoid.

Bu­reau­crat­ic struc­tures must nev­er be built to slow progress. In­stead, they must be made more mis­sion-ori­ent­ed in light of to­day’s ma­jor chal­lenges, and not mere­ly to guar­an­tee or­di­nary pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion, if we hope to achieve ex­tra­or­di­nary out­comes.

No one has the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to do it alone, and it is pos­si­ble to find trust­wor­thy friends where masks fall away. We must re­spect com­pe­tence and worth wher­ev­er we find them. The world is splin­tered, and on­ly by keep­ing the con­ver­sa­tion open do we have the best chance to find the still point. This point is not about fix­i­ty or still­ness. Nei­ther from nor to­wards it spins.

And in that turn­ing, we must find the still point of pure un­der­stand­ing of our plan­ta­tion past and our lives as in­for­ma­tion or­gan­isms in the in­fos­phere rev­o­lu­tion. A still point in which there is nei­ther mo­tion nor rest. It is a place where the whirling dervish spins, and there is on­ly the dance. Noth­ing is out­side the dance.

A still point out­side the flow of time, a point where our past, present and fu­ture are gath­ered. A place of in­ner free­dom and rea­soned agency. A place of clar­i­ty, self-knowl­edge, where we can per­ceive the West In­dies anew, as if see­ing the old for the first time, and in­flu­enc­ing our fu­ture in the age of AI.

Uruguay, Chile, and Brazil are Latin Amer­i­can lead­ers in AI, pi­o­neer­ing na­tion­al strate­gies, re­search, and adop­tion, with Chile lead­ing in pol­i­cy and in­fra­struc­ture, Brazil strong in re­search and de­vel­op­ment and adop­tion, es­pe­cial­ly agri­cul­ture and pub­lic sec­tor changes, and Uruguay ex­celling in in­te­gra­tion and gov­er­nance, be­com­ing the first LATAM na­tion to sign the Coun­cil of Eu­rope AI treaty.

They all face chal­lenges in tal­ent gaps, in­vest­ment, and con­sis­tent reg­u­la­tion amidst rapid re­gion­al growth and in­no­va­tion. But this has not stopped them from build­ing Latam-GPT to learn and work at a com­pet­i­tive lev­el re­gard­less of so­cioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus. Un­til now, we have not had a re­gion­al lan­guage mod­el. It is a chal­lenge that re­quires the ef­fort of all of Latin Amer­i­ca.

Dr Fazal Ali com­plet­ed his Mas­ter’s in Phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. He was a Com­mon­wealth Schol­ar who at­tend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, Hugh­es Hall, the provost of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the act­ing pres­i­dent, and chair­man of the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. He is present­ly a con­sul­tant with the IDB. He can be reached at faza­lal­itsc@gmail.com