AI is not about to steal all of our jobs. But that doesn’t mean we can afford to do nothing.

Pick up any newspaper, scroll through social media, or sit in a lunch room at a business process outsourcing (BPO) firm and you will hear the same worry spoken in different ways: “AI coming for we work!”

It is a real fear, and it deserves a real answer — not a dismissal, and not more panic.

So here is the honest picture, drawn from actual research on Jamaica specifically.

The global headlines are scary. The Jamaican reality is different.

Overseas, some large companies did rush to replace workers with AI chat bots and automation tools — and many of them are now regretting it.

A 2026 study by global recruitment firm Robert Half found that nearly three in 10 companies that laid off workers after adopting AI have already had to rehire them. The Swedish payments company Klarna became the most talked-about example: They replaced around 700 customer service agents with an AI chat bot, celebrated the savings publicly, then quietly started bringing people back when customer complaints climbed and service quality fell apart.

Forrester, one of the world’s leading research firms, put it plainly: More than half of the employers who made AI-driven layoffs now regret the decision. One in three spent more money rehiring and retraining than they ever saved from the cuts in the first place. That is the global boomerang. Companies threw people out, and the jobs came flying back.

But Jamaica is not Klarna. And before we import the panic we should look at what the data actually says about us. Jamaica does not yet have the AI infrastructure to replace its workforce at scale — and the numbers prove it.

A comprehensive assessment of Jamaica’s AI readiness, conducted under the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) framework, and led through the Office of the Prime Minister, found that the country has no dedicated AI budget line, no national count of AI-displaced workers, and private sector AI adoption remains mostly at the pilot and early trial stage.

Jamaica’s entire AI research output over a five-year period amounted to 13 published papers and zero patents. That is not the profile of a country on the verge of a robot takeover.

Meanwhile, the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) at The University of the West Indies (The UWI) Public AI Readiness Study — a national survey of over one thousand Jamaicans conducted in 2026 — gave the country a readiness score of 60 out of 100. That places us in a “developing and transitioning” category. In plain terms: We are aware of AI, many of us are already using it in small ways, but formal training is low, trust is cautious, and the ability to truly benefit from AI is not evenly spread across society.

The BPO sector is exposed, but it is not finished. The call centre and other BPOs is the sector most people worry about, and that concern has a basis. AI tools can handle routine queries, summarise calls, classify complaints, and guide agents through scripts. Some of that work will change. Some entry-level tasks will shrink.

But here is what AI cannot do, at least not yet and not without significant investment in systems that Jamaica does not currently have: It cannot replicate the empathy a Jamaican agent brings to a frustrated customer, the cultural fluency that makes a difficult call feel human, or the judgement needed when a situation falls outside any script. Those are not small things. Those are the things that keep clients choosing Jamaican BPO centres over cheaper alternatives elsewhere.

The real opportunity is not to defend every old task but to move up. From call agent, to AI-assisted agent, to quality analyst, to supervisor, to operations specialist. That pathway is real, but it requires training — and right now the training infrastructure is not keeping up with the pace of change.

So what should actually happen?

Jamaica’s own National AI Task Force has already recommended the right things:

• AI literacy in schools and training institutions

• prompt engineering courses through HEART/NSTA

• a new AI lab at the University of Technology, Jamaica and

• a workforce readiness strategy that treats real people — not just tech companies — as the priority.

The question is whether those recommendations move fast enough to stay ahead of the change.

The danger for Jamaica is not a sudden flood of robots emptying our offices. The danger is a slower, quieter divide — where some workers learn to work alongside AI and move up, while others are left behind, not because AI replaced them, but because nobody invested in preparing them.

Fear is understandable. But fear without information is not protection. It is just anxiety.

The time to prepare is now — while we still have the advantage of knowing what is coming.

Trevor Forrest is chairman of Lignum Security Limited, a provider of AI-driven cybersecurity solutions and consulting services.

Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or trevorforrest@lignumsecurity.com