Amid the proliferation of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, professional services organisation EY Caribbean is urging regional workforce leaders to reaffirm human ingenuity as the heart of business and technological advancements as they move forward with digital transformations.

“I know you won’t disagree with me if I say that we’re living in a moment where technology is accelerating things faster than ever before. It’s rewriting industries, reimagining services, and redefining how value is created,” said Agida Biervliet, senior manager of people consulting at EY Suriname.

“So the question is, if the future is human, how do we design technology to amplify and protect our potential rather than diminish them?” she asked.

That was the enduring question behind a Thursday morning forum put on by EY Caribbean at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel, dubbed ‘The Future is Human, leading transformation with confidence’, and hosted in an effort to highlight the irreplaceable human aspect necessary to the changing workforce.

Describing the theme as timely and important, Minister of Efficiency, Innovation and Digital Transformation, Ambassador Audrey Marks acknowledged that digital transformation was not optional but a cornerstone of national development.
Marks noted that AI was no longer a thing of the future but the present.

“The question is not whether we adopt AI, but how responsibly and inclusively we do so. AI must be aligned to human values, ethical principles, and public trust,” she said, acknowledging that the government was aware of its responsibility to protect citizens’ rights while enabling growth.

Citing a reluctance to change, skill gaps, cybersecurity and data ethics as some major roadblocks to technological advancement locally, Marks emphasised that strong people-focused leadership would help tackle these issues.

“AI may generate a first draft, but people make the final decision; technology supports work, it does not replace purpose,” she said, adding, “As leaders, our responsibility is to ensure that digital progress remains legitimate, ethical, people-centred, and anchored in public value.”

Anjelique Parnell, EY CHARO 2030 project lead, making a presentation at ‘The Future is Human’ forum hosted by EY Caribbean at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel on Thursday, January 15, 2026. (Photo: Naphtali Junior)

Chairman of the National Artificial Intelligence Task Force, Christopher Reckord, highlighted the importance of people and their innate creativity to any digital transformation.

“It is important for us to understand that AI dominates probability, but humans dominate possibility,” Reckford said.

Highlighting data that clearly shows that humans cannot fly, Reckord pointed to the Wright brothers, inventors of the aeroplane, who determinedly invented a way for human beings to do that very thing.

He warned that forgetting to include the people of a workplace in digital transformation was a harbinger of failure.

“The number one reason why AI digital projects fail in organisations is simply that we exclude the people who must live with the change. So, whatever IT we’re implementing, whatever technology we’re putting in, we cannot transform a workplace by an announcement. If the staff feels that a transformation is being done to them, they will resist it. Sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly, but very effectively,” he explained.

Providing insight into how AI is being used in the workforce globally and the challenges and opportunities that it can create, Anjelique Parnell, EY CHARO 2030 project lead, said that according to an annual ‘Work Reimagined’ global study, only 28 per cent of companies globally have what she described as a Talent Advantage, integrating the use of AI with a strong team.

Those companies, Parnell said, were outperforming their peers 17 times over, with eight times more productivity, whereas some organisations that implemented AI systems on fragile talent saw up to a 40 per cent lag in productivity.

“AI is fundamentally disrupting how we do business. How we connect, et cetera. But you cannot unlock AI value without the humans,” she said.

One of the tenets Parnell urged leaders to consider was the balance between workload and integration, ensuring that employees are not being burned out by just “throwing AI on them and not making sure the work is in place.”

Meanwhile, a panel of local leaders across industries, including banking, agriculture, finance, manufacturing and the public sector, addressed Jamaica and the Caribbean’s ongoing readiness to implement AI-driven solutions.

While all speakers said that the country was in different stages of readiness, Matthew Lyn, Chief Executive Officer at the CB Group, in assessing the country’s readiness, said “not ready” but added that his team was moving forward with technology on the manufacturing front, including using it to help grade chickens and maintain sterility in certain areas.

Sheila Segree-White, Vice President of Human Resources at the Scotiabank Group, said her team was “getting ready”, citing increased connectivity within the Scotiabank group globally.

Deidre Cousins, Chief Information Officer at GraceKennedy Group, pointed to her answer of “ready” as one of the positive holdovers of the COVID-19 pandemic that forced the group to pivot and improve its technological systems.

In admitting that the public sector moves more slowly than the private sector, Maria Thompson Walters, Executive Director of the Transformation Implementation Unit (TIU) said that the government was not ready but had the benefit of knowing that it was not ready.

“And so work has been continuing over a number of years. The public sector is not one organisation. We are a big, amorphous entity, and we have different organisations that are at different phases in respect to digital transformation. But from a central perspective, government has been trying to ensure the infrastructure that’s required to first enable, on the technology side, successful transformation,” she said.

The panel of speakers emphasised that digital transformation using artificial intelligence is necessary for future advancement, but without a people-centred process can easily fail. Speakers acknowledged that this failure is not the fault of AI, but rather when leaders avoid the difficult decisions around priorities, behaviours and people.