This is the first of a two-part series examining how artificial intelligence (AI) could create new opportunities for Jamaican entrepreneurs, businesses, and workers.

AN AI officer’s value lies in identifying work that can make a business more profitable or improve its service, then ensuring that the technology performs reliably. The role combines commercial judgement, technical understanding and responsibility for the results.

For entrepreneurs, that can mean developing a service that operates beyond their own working hours. For employers, it can mean giving knowledgeable staff the tools and authority to improve operations or create new revenue.

The scale of the opportunity is already visible. In November 2025, AI coding company Cursor reported more than US$1 billion in annualised revenue and announced funding at a US$29.3-billion valuation. It had built a specialised product for developers, backed by a team of more than 300 people. Those company-reported milestones describe an exceptional business; they do not establish a typical founder’s prospects or show that its founders held the title of AI officer.

The connection lies in the work: understanding an expensive problem, building a dependable solution and retaining ownership as the business grows.

Where Caribbean businesses can capture value

The Caribbean AI Association’s October 2026 market and value-capture framework distinguishes between what customers spend on AI, what Caribbean suppliers earn and the value those suppliers add after deducting the cost of goods and services used in delivery. It is unpublished scenario-modelling research, not a measured valuation of the current regional AI market. Its practical distinction matters: buying more AI services does not, by itself, establish how much value Caribbean suppliers create.

A separate public CAIA study, Jamaica: Jobs, AI and Export Demand, illustrates the wider stakes. Its broad-adoption simulation places the country’s GDP level 3.61 per cent above a matched no-AI path at the start of 2030. The same scenario produces higher unemployment and lower wages for the model’s cognitive-work group. These are conditional results, not forecasts or annual growth rates. The study uses official employment data, but assumptions about local adoption and worker movement remain unmeasured. It has not been peer-reviewed.

For regional firms, the opportunity therefore includes the implementation work surrounding AI: adapting systems, integrating them into operations, providing support and developing products customers can trust. Who owns and delivers those services matters alongside who buys the technology.

A broader regional study points to another opening: Products that work better under local conditions. IDB Lab’s May 2026 Start-ups x AI report drew on 107 responses from start-ups operating across 14 Latin American and Caribbean countries, alongside case studies. It identified shortages of funding and specialist skills, privacy concerns and difficulties adapting global AI solutions to local needs. Its exploratory sample is not a measure of adoption across all Caribbean businesses.

For an AI officer, local knowledge is essential to product testing. This means checking whether a system handles the language customers use, the documents staff receive and the payment and approval processes the business follows. A tool that performs well in a demonstration must still work under those conditions. Selling across islands also requires an understanding of the rules and operating practices in each market rather than treating the Caribbean as one uniform customer base.

What valuable AI work looks like

There is evidence that AI assistance can improve performance. Research described by MIT Sloan in April 2024 examined an AI support tool using data covering 5,179 customer-support workers. Average productivity rose by about 14 per cent, with gains concentrated among newer, lower-skilled workers and little efficiency gain among the most skilled. Staff could choose whether to use its suggestions.

That uneven result gives an AI officer something concrete to investigate: Which tasks and employees benefit, how much checking they need and whether service quality holds up. Counting generated answers is less useful than tracking resolved cases, errors and customer complaints.

Shopify’s Sidekick provides a documented example in commerce. It uses store data, helps create product descriptions and builds workflows for repetitive tasks. Changes are presented for review before they are applied. An AI officer must decide where those capabilities improve the shop’s performance and where approval should remain with a person.

With AI and the right guidance, a Jamaican teenager has an opportunity to challenge an established industry giant. Local companies should also recognise that potential within their own workforce, giving employees the tools, training and support to develop solutions that improve performance and create new business opportunities.

The opportunity for a young founder is to compete with a multibillion-dollar firm in a narrowly defined service, supported by training and access to suitable tools. They still need testing, customers and reliable delivery, while respecting tool age limits and obtaining appropriate adult assistance with payments and contracts. Growing the business requires funding and customer access as well as a working prototype. A phone provides access to software, but not the resources or reach of an established company.

Within established businesses, intrapreneurs are employees who develop improvements or new ventures. They need protected time, approved tools and data, a small testing budget and a manager who can help overcome obstacles to decision-making. Their contributions should be rewarded based on measurable customer value rather than the number of experiments launched. Staff who identify recurring complaints and delays need a way to act on that knowledge.

For employees, the financial reward depends on the arrangement, whether through salary, promotion, profit-sharing or negotiated equity. Creating value for an employer does not automatically confer ownership.

Dunkley reports a newly identified finding from his Caribbean Way of Work with AI study: One well-trained employee using AI could produce the same amount of valuable work as three employees performing the work examined. This should not be treated as a universal staffing ratio or a promise to programme participants.

Editor’s note: In Part Two, Dunkley continues his examination of the opportunities presented by AI and what they could mean for Jamaica’s business landscape.

Adrian Dunkley is the founder and chief executive officer of Star Apple AI.