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Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Cor­po­rate gov­er­nance con­fer­ence hears:

'AI a threat to Intellectual Property rights'

by

Raphael John-Lall
38 days ago
20250713

Raphael John-Lall

Caribbean Cor­po­rate Gov­er­nance In­sti­tute (CC­GI) chair­man Nigel Ro­mano is warn­ing that Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) can lead to a small­er work­force.

Ro­mano, who is al­so a for­mer man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of JMMB among oth­er man­age­r­i­al po­si­tions in the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor, spoke on the open­ing day of the CC­GI’s Gov­er­nance week on June 22 un­der the theme “Gov­er­nance in the Age of Gen­er­a­tive AI.”

“The oth­er prob­lem that most peo­ple are afraid of is the im­pact on white col­lar jobs. We are al­so see­ing it com­ing up very rapid­ly. Two days ago, Bloomberg shared an es­say called ‘Sil­i­con Val­ley tiny team era is here.’ One of the things that they em­pha­sised is that these days brag­ging rights are go­ing to en­tre­pre­neurs who keep head­count the low­est. The new holy grail met­ric is not a bil­lion-dol­lar val­u­a­tion but rev­enue per em­ploy­ee,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to the Bloomberg ar­ti­cle dat­ed June 20, in the era of start­up “blitzs­cal­ing,” which last­ed rough­ly from Face­book’s IPO in 2012 un­til We­Work’s bank­rupt­cy fil­ing in 2023, mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion and to­tal cap­i­tal raised were prized met­rics. The ul­ti­mate mile­stone was reach­ing “uni­corn sta­tus” — a US$1 bil­lion val­u­a­tion that was of­ten ac­com­pa­nied by rapid hir­ing.

Bloomberg’s ar­ti­cle con­tin­ued by blunt­ly stat­ing that that era is now over and these days, “brag­ging rights” are go­ing to en­tre­pre­neurs who keep head­count the low­est.

Ro­mano al­so said the in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness news me­dia is al­so churn­ing out AI-re­lat­ed sto­ries about the speed of its evo­lu­tion and im­pact on busi­ness­es and the econ­o­my.

“Al­most every email, every no­ti­fi­ca­tion whether it is from Bloomberg, New York Times, Fi­nan­cial Times has some­thing on AI. What struck me is not just the pow­er of what ex­ists to­day but the speed by which it is evolv­ing. The kinds of pow­er that we are talk­ing about needs to be gov­erned, needs to be con­trolled.”

New busi­ness mod­el need­ed

Pro­fes­sor Bob Gar­rat, who is based in Lon­don, is a glob­al con­sul­tant on cor­po­rate gov­er­nance in the busi­ness world who al­so spoke, blamed Sil­i­con Val­ley for de­vel­op­ing a busi­ness mod­el around tech­nol­o­gy that fo­cus­es on on­ly max­imis­ing fi­nan­cial prof­its over every­thing else.

He said there needs to be a new and bal­anced busi­ness mod­el.

“This is the busi­ness mod­el that has been de­vel­oped be­hind it and I have done some dig­ging and frankly it scares me be­cause the busi­ness mod­el is all based on the mon­eti­sa­tion of every­thing that is be­ing done. There is very lit­tle eth­i­cal dis­cus­sion about it, it is pure mon­eti­sa­tion. It goes back to this no­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly but not ex­clu­sive­ly, to Sil­i­con Val­ley that it was okay to move fast and break things and that has be­come a mantra of that type of busi­ness. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, break­ing things is break­ing the law which is break­ing the rules and reg­u­la­tion of cor­po­rate gov­er­nance.”

He spoke about how In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty rights are now be­ing de­stroyed with the evo­lu­tion of AI.

“What is be­ing said in the busi­ness world is that we can steal any­thing, in­clud­ing in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. We can crawl our way through that and take every­thing from it with­out any ac­knowl­edge­ment to the au­thors and de­sign­ers who ac­tu­al­ly cre­at­ed that in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. Com­pa­nies are just be­gin­ning to re­alise that it ap­plies as much to them as to au­thors and writ­ers. There is be­gin­ning to be some pan­ic there. I am very wor­ried about their lan­guage learn­ing mod­els and at the mo­ment there does not seem to be any reg­u­la­tion.”

He lament­ed that the idea of de­vel­op­ing gen­er­a­tive AI is to sur­pass hu­man in­tel­li­gence, which “scares” him.

“So, if we are build­ing mod­els fair­ly thought­less­ly, al­low­ing big busi­ness, very big busi­ness­es, su­per busi­ness­es to run over us and on the one hand we are hop­ing that we can sur­pass hu­man in­tel­li­gence and on the oth­er hand we can do that by theft of ex­ist­ing and fu­ture in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty then I think that this con­fer­ence has a lot to think about.”

Dig­i­tal di­vide

Pro­fes­sor of Com­put­er Sci­ence, Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty of Beirut, Lebanon, Dr Fa­ti­ma K Abu Salem, said all stake­hold­ers are now feel­ing an “AI burnout” re­lat­ed to job in­se­cu­ri­ty and a grow­ing dig­i­tal di­vide not on­ly in so­ci­ety but among na­tions glob­al­ly.

“Every­one is im­pact­ed in­clud­ing us com­put­er sci­en­tists or aca­d­e­mics. There is al­so a con­cern about AI su­premac,y which is emerg­ing clas­si­fi­ca­tions of na­tions such as those who are able to de­vel­op more of the tal­ent and the fi­nances and that deals with an­oth­er trend of AI colo­nial­ism. This is about the re­pro­duc­tion of the trend of colo­nial­ism and we see it un­rav­el­ling in the AI con­text. This is an era where de­ci­sions in board­rooms will be made by AI sys­tems and every­one is pan­ick­ing.”

She said gen­er­a­tive AI is al­ready in board­rooms of com­pa­nies and busi­ness­es and what dis­tin­guish­es it from tra­di­tion­al AI is that is now open­ing new fron­tiers in in­no­va­tion, de­ci­sion mak­ing and strat­e­gy.

In the world of busi­ness, she said AI is now au­tomat­ing con­tent cre­ation and cus­tomer ser­vices. It al­so re­views con­tracts and gen­er­ates per­son­alised mar­ket­ing. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, AI is now ac­cel­er­at­ing cod­ing and soft­ware de­vel­op­ment.

“Peo­ple have start­ed to wor­ry about how many jobs are at risk. There is the 2025 World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum Re­port which states that cler­i­cal roles, cashiers, ad­min­is­tra­tive as­sis­tants are pret­ty much dy­ing. But of course, a lot of oth­er jobs are in de­mand such as AI/ML spe­cial­ists, da­ta an­a­lysts and de­vel­op­ers con­tin­ue to be on the rise.”

She pre­dict­ed that the “scari­est trend” over the next five years will be agen­tic AI which rep­re­sents a ma­jor shift in AI and hu­man col­lab­o­ra­tion to au­tonomous sys­tems.

“It can ex­e­cute com­plex work­flows re­quir­ing min­i­mal hu­man in­put. They are bet­ter than gen­er­a­tive AI in deal­ing with cor­po­rate val­ues. They are more re­li­able than gen­er­a­tive AI.”

Fi­nal­ly, she raised the ques­tion of how AI re­spon­si­bil­i­ty ties in with Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty (CSR).

“I think boards need clear de­f­i­n­i­tions and they need to be aware of the fact that it will al­ways be an evolv­ing land­scape. AI sys­tems are con­sum­ing elec­tric­i­ty. By 2030 in the Unit­ed States, AI da­ta cen­tres may dri­ve 40 per cent of to­tal new pow­er de­mands. There is al­so the is­sue of AI work­force dis­place­ment and tran­si­tion-plan­ning. Mas­sive oc­cu­pa­tion­al shifts are ex­pect­ed by 2030 as 1 in 16 work­ers may need a new job.”


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