Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (MPAAI) Do­minic Smith says ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence has im­mense po­ten­tial to pos­i­tive­ly shape the pub­lic ser­vice.

How­ev­er, he as­sert­ed that AI should not re­place work­ers but aid them.

In his ad­dress on day two of Am­cham T&T’s 7th An­nu­al Tech Hub Is­lands Sum­mit (THIS) 2025 on yes­ter­day, Smith said, “AI holds enor­mous po­ten­tial—from pre­dic­tive health­care an­a­lyt­ics to in­tel­li­gent traf­fic sys­tems. But we must pro­ceed wise­ly, pru­dent and mind­ful of the risks: pri­va­cy, se­cu­ri­ty, ethics and job dis­place­ment. Our ap­proach is clear: AI should aug­ment, not re­place, hu­man ca­pa­bil­i­ty. It should en­able pub­lic ser­vants to fo­cus on high-val­ue, peo­ple-cen­tred work.”

He added, “We will sup­port AI in­no­va­tion hubs and in­cu­ba­tors, nur­tur­ing home-grown so­lu­tions tai­lored to our unique Caribbean re­al­i­ties and nu­ances.”

The min­is­ter not­ed that Gov­ern­ment need­ed some buy-in from the pri­vate sec­tor, as it at­tempt­ed to pur­sue dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in terms of e-gov­ern­ment and e-iden­ti­ty plat­forms, while al­so be­ing mind­ful of the lin­ger­ing threat of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty.

“In a world de­fined by dig­i­tal di­vides, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty threats and cli­mate vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, col­lab­o­ra­tion is es­sen­tial. As is­land na­tions, we are unit­ed by com­mon chal­lenges and shared as­pi­ra­tions. MPAAI is com­mit­ted to fos­ter­ing strong part­ner­ships—na­tion­al­ly, re­gion­al­ly and glob­al­ly. The pri­vate sec­tor is a key part­ner,” Smith said.

Al­so speak­ing at the ses­sion, Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd vice pres­i­dent Richard Sam­my not­ed that AI was yet to be ful­ly adapt­ed in the re­gion, but said pro­jec­tions sug­gest­ed it could have a ma­jor im­pact in the near fu­ture.

“In the Caribbean, this shift car­ries im­mense po­ten­tial and ur­gency. A 2025 col­lab­o­ra­tive study by the World Bank and In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion, ti­tled Quan­ti­fy­ing the Job Po­ten­tial of AI in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean,” in­di­cates that 30 to 40 per cent of jobs in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean are ex­posed to gen­er­a­tive AI, where 8-12 per cent could see im­me­di­ate pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains,” he said.

“This is a clar­i­on call that the in­flu­ence of emerg­ing and grow­ing tech­nolo­gies is not some­thing for the dis­tant fu­ture—it is the re­al­i­ty we must lean in­to, to­geth­er.”

He said RBL had been push­ing to make the ad­just­ments, stat­ing that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty had gone be­yond IT de­part­ments.

“The suc­cess­ful ex­e­cu­tion of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion hap­pens when strat­e­gy, tal­ent and tech­nol­o­gy are aligned. Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion suc­ceeds when we stop treat­ing tech­nol­o­gy as a sup­port func­tion and start own­ing it as a strate­gic ad­van­tage,” he said.

The theme for this year’s sum­mit was “En­gage. Ex­e­cute. Evolve.”

Am­cham T&T CEO Ni­rad Tewarie not­ed in his ad­dress that the event fea­tured dis­cus­sions about AI which were no longer about it com­ing, but rather the fact that it was al­ready here.