Researcher: T&T must build AI safeguards as sector develops

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go has the foun­da­tion to be­come a re­gion­al play­er in ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, but the coun­try must ur­gent­ly strength­en its poli­cies and safe­guards as it moves ahead with am­bi­tious plans for large-scale AI in­fra­struc­ture, says the lo­cal re­searcher be­hind the coun­try’s lat­est glob­al AI as­sess­ment.

Coun­try re­searcher Shur­land George, a ca­pac­i­ty de­vel­op­ment spe­cial­ist work­ing at the in­ter­sec­tion of ed­u­ca­tion, da­ta and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, said the find­ings of the Glob­al In­dex on Re­spon­si­ble AI (GI­RAI) 2026 should be viewed as a start­ing point for na­tion­al ac­tion.

Orig­i­nal­ly from T&T and cur­rent­ly based in Toron­to, Cana­da, he pos­sess­es ex­ten­sive pro­fes­sion­al ex­pe­ri­ence span­ning in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, re­search and in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty build­ing.

“This re­sult shows that Trinidad and To­ba­go has some of the un­der­ly­ing con­di­tions in place to gov­ern AI re­spon­si­bly, but the spe­cif­ic poli­cies and pro­tec­tions that turn good in­ten­tions in­to re­al safe­guards for cit­i­zens are still catch­ing up,” George said.

“The score is a start­ing point for a con­ver­sa­tion about what comes next, not a fi­nal grade.”

George’s com­ments come as this coun­try in­ten­si­fies dis­cus­sions around be­com­ing a re­gion­al dig­i­tal and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence hub, in­clud­ing pro­posed plans for the de­vel­op­ment of up to 800 megawatts (MW) of AI-ready da­ta cen­tre ca­pac­i­ty through Mem­o­ran­da of Un­der­stand­ing signed with US firms Ernst & Young (EY) and Hum­ming­bird AI Hold­ings.

The pro­posed projects have sparked na­tion­al de­bate over en­er­gy de­mand, wa­ter con­sump­tion, en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts and whether the coun­try has the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work need­ed to over­see such large-scale tech­nol­o­gy in­vest­ments.

The GI­RAI 2026 re­port places T&T at 86th glob­al­ly, im­prov­ing from 93rd in 2024.

How­ev­er, the as­sess­ment high­lights sig­nif­i­cant weak­ness­es in the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to man­age the risks as­so­ci­at­ed with ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.

The coun­try’s strongest per­for­mance came in its en­abling en­vi­ron­ment, scor­ing 56.54 out of 100. This area mea­sures fac­tors such as dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture, skills de­vel­op­ment, gov­er­nance ca­pac­i­ty and in­sti­tu­tion­al readi­ness.

But its AI pol­i­cy frame­work scored on­ly 13.05 out of 100, re­veal­ing a gap be­tween the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to at­tract tech­nol­o­gy in­vest­ment and its pre­pared­ness to reg­u­late emerg­ing sys­tems.

The re­port iden­ti­fied Ethics and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty as Trinidad and To­ba­go’s weak­est area, with a score of 20.33 out of 100.

That find­ing comes amid con­cerns over pro­posed AI da­ta cen­tres, which re­quire sub­stan­tial elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter re­sources to op­er­ate and cool ad­vanced com­put­ing sys­tems.

En­vi­ron­men­tal groups, re­searchers and mem­bers of the pub­lic have ques­tioned whether ad­e­quate en­vi­ron­men­tal as­sess­ments, wa­ter avail­abil­i­ty stud­ies and cli­mate re­silience plans have been com­plet­ed be­fore ma­jor com­mit­ments are made.

The con­cerns are par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant giv­en ex­ist­ing chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try’s wa­ter in­fra­struc­ture and re­cur­ring short­ages.

The GI­RAI re­port al­so found lim­it­ed ev­i­dence of ded­i­cat­ed sys­tems for AI trans­paren­cy, pub­lic dis­clo­sure of gov­ern­ment AI use and mech­a­nisms for cit­i­zens to chal­lenge po­ten­tial AI-re­lat­ed harms.

Civ­il so­ci­ety en­gage­ment in AI pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment was scored at 13.49, high­light­ing an­oth­er area re­quir­ing im­prove­ment.

While gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have said the pro­posed da­ta cen­tre de­vel­op­ments re­main in the due dili­gence phase and have point­ed to pos­si­ble so­lu­tions such as man-made ponds and fu­ture de­sali­na­tion fa­cil­i­ties, crit­ics ar­gue that stronger gov­er­nance struc­tures should be es­tab­lished be­fore im­ple­men­ta­tion.

George said the coun­try’s cur­rent po­si­tion presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op a re­spon­si­ble AI ecosys­tem that bal­ances in­no­va­tion with pub­lic in­ter­est.

The GI­RAI re­port rec­om­mends that T&T es­tab­lish a na­tion­al AI strat­e­gy, in­tro­duce stronger en­vi­ron­men­tal stan­dards for da­ta cen­tres, cre­ate pub­lic dis­clo­sure re­quire­ments and en­sure that cit­i­zens, work­ers and civ­il so­ci­ety groups have a voice in ma­jor tech­nol­o­gy de­ci­sions.