Dear Editor,

AI ethicism will become even more valuable for Jamaica and the Caribbean. This is but one realisation I came to earlier this month as I took a moment to consider the myriad ways in which the Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way in which human beings think, live, interact, work, and do business.

The arguable centrepiece of this revolution is artificial intelligence (AI), and Jamaica as well as the Caribbean at large are definitely catching on. As autonomous AI technologies are being utilised to make more decisions that impact and/or have the capacity to impact human lives, rights, and liberties in very consequential ways, establishing and observing fundamental and universally accepted ethical principles to guide the deployment of AI technologies and constrain AI misuse has become that much more significant.

For me, AI ethicism, as a practice, involves prioritising ethical principles in the configuration, development, and deployment of AI technologies. A few already recognised and accepted principles of AI ethics include transparency, privacy, accountability, accuracy, inclusivity, impartiality, and human oversight. Notably, there has already been a marked upsurge in the number of courses and programmes of study (to be delivered both in person and virtually) exploring the ethics of AI in a society being developed and offered by universities and other institutions of higher learning overseas.

In Jamaica, we see that facial recognition technologies (FRTs) — the utilisation of which has caused considerable controversy in far more developed and technologically sophisticated countries due to concerns about algorithmic biases that exacerbate their capacity for misidentification of minority/vulnerable groups — are increasingly being utilised as a crime-fighting tool. While the goal of tackling crime is a legitimate objective, the deployment of FRTs to aid in the achievement of this objective must be guided by objective principles of AI ethics to obviate situations in which individuals are wrongfully arrested and detained as a consequence of misidentification by FRTs.

In this context, prioritising principles of AI ethics in the configuration, development, and ultimate deployment of FRTs will ensure that the existence of algorithmic biases is minimised as well as that the data sets that are used to train the FRTs are objectively diverse.

Across the Caribbean there have been similar developments in the proliferation, development, and deployment of AI technologies in the past few years. Recognising this, Caribbean experts met in 2020 and had a discussion on the ethics of AI, which was facilitated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The purpose of their discussion was “to set global norms” around AI ethicism. That discussion was followed by the adoption of UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in 2021, which applies to all 194 UNESCO member states. The recommendation also informed the preparation of the UNESCO Caribbean AI Policy Roadmap.

As AI technologies continue to proliferate, be developed, and deployed at rapid rates in international, regional, and local contexts, AI ethicism will no doubt become even more valuable for Jamaica and the Caribbean. Education and upskilling around AI ethicism will prove crucial for Jamaica and the Caribbean’s sustainability within the AI labyrinth. So too will establishing clear regulatory frameworks and oversight mechanisms to ensure that AI systems comply with the relevant principles of AI ethics.

Amanda Janell DeAmor Quest

amandajdquest@gmail.com