Trinidad and Tobago has a Ministry of Artificial Intelligence. What it does not yet have is the foundation beneath it — and that foundation does not begin in government. It begins inside individual organisations.
The argument is simple and uncomfortable: every organisation that adopts AI becomes part of its country’s AI infrastructure. Which means every organisation carries a responsibility to govern the technology well — and the ones that don’t may end up shaping the next crisis rather than the future.
That case has been made forcefully by Professor Renée Cummings, a Trinidadian criminologist turned globally recognised AI ethicist, now a professor of practice at the University of Virginia School of Data Science and co-director of the AI Equity Lab at the Brookings Institution. Speaking to the Business Guardian, she framed it this way:
“National AI readiness doesn’t begin with government. It begins inside every organisation. The organisations that govern AI well will help shape the future of their countries. The ones that don’t may shape its next crisis.”
Her forthcoming executive blueprint, GOVERN™, turns that principle into six responsibilities every organisation adopting AI has to shoulder.
What does GOVERN stand for?
- G — Governance
- O — Oversight
- V — Value Creation
- E — Ethics and Accountability
- R — Risk Management
- N — National and Organisational Readiness
Read as a whole, it describes something most Caribbean businesses have never been asked to do: treat AI adoption as a governance decision rather than a software purchase.
A ministry, but not yet a national strategy
Trinidad and Tobago deserves real credit for a bold move. Few countries anywhere have a dedicated Ministry of AI, and it positions the country as a potential regional leader. The concern is what sits underneath it — the country has committed significant resources to AI without a national strategy to regulate the technology, and is among the few nations standing up AI systems inside government without that regulatory foundation in place.
For businesses, the practical implication is that you should not wait. National policy prepares the country and its public services; it does not make your individual organisation ready, readable or accountable. That work is yours.
Why data protection is the real starting line
The missing foundation starts with data. Trinidad and Tobago’s Data Protection Act of 2012 has never been fully enacted — and as Cummings puts it, ungoverned or biased data is where AI’s risks actually originate:
“There is no AI without data. So if you don’t get your data right, you are never going to get your AI right.”
What happens when governance is absent is not hypothetical. In the Netherlands, the childcare-benefits scandal known as the toeslagenaffaire brought down the government in 2021 after an automated system wrongly accused thousands of families of fraud on the basis of discriminatory profiles. Efficiency without oversight caused systemic harm and destroyed public trust.
What questions should a board ask before adopting AI?
Governing AI responsibly means being able to answer a set of hard questions before deployment, not after:
- How do we govern this technology — and who is accountable when it gets something wrong?
- How do we procure it, and what are we agreeing to about our data?
- What is our risk-management and crisis-management approach if it fails publicly?
- How do we handle transparency, fairness and equity in what it produces?
- What does it currently understand about us — and is that accurate?
Will AI cost jobs in the Caribbean?
The honest answer is that AI takes jobs from those who don’t adapt, not from everyone. The advice is to become irreplaceable through AI literacy and a human-centred approach to how these systems are deployed.
There is a regional dimension that deserves more attention than it gets. Cummings notes that Trinidad and Tobago sits around 105th on global AI-readiness rankings — broadly consistent with Oxford Insights’ Government AI Readiness Index, which placed the country 104th in its 2023 edition — and that most global AI strategies are not built with the Caribbean in mind. The creative and “imagination” economy — calypso, soca, and the many roles held by women in the creative sector — is especially exposed, and much of the knowledge baked into today’s AI is Eurocentric rather than inclusive of Caribbean voices. Initiatives like the University of the West Indies’ Artificial Intelligence Innovation Centre are a meaningful step toward closing that gap.
Governance needs something to govern
Here is what we see in Caribbean organisations every week, and it is the practical gap in every governance conversation: governance fails when there is nothing solid to govern.
You cannot hold AI accountable for how it represents your organisation if your organisation’s knowledge is scattered, inconsistent, or invisible to machines in the first place. You cannot set a policy on accuracy if you have never checked what AI currently says about you.
GOVERN’s final pillar — National and Organisational Readiness — and the insistence that “there is no AI without data” describe exactly the problem our AI Experience Blueprint™ was built to solve. Before an organisation can set policy on how AI should behave, it needs three things:
- To know what AI currently understands about it.
- To organise its knowledge so machines read it accurately.
- To make that knowledge structured, current and auditable.
That is the operational layer beneath governance — and it is concretely the work we do. An AI Visibility Audit is really a governance baseline: a clear picture of what today’s AI systems believe about your organisation, right now. Knowledge Architecture and Structured Data are how you “get your data right” so what AI says about you is accurate and within your control. Because we build from the Caribbean, that knowledge keeps its local context rather than being flattened into someone else’s worldview.
Where to start
The challenge — that readiness begins inside the organisation — is one every business can act on now, without waiting for a national strategy. The first move is to find out where you stand.
Run your free AI Visibility Check →
Frequently asked questions
Where does AI readiness actually begin?
Inside individual organisations, not in government. National policy prepares a country’s public services, but it does not make your business readable, accurate or accountable to AI systems. That work belongs to each organisation and can start immediately.
What is GOVERN™?
GOVERN™ is an executive blueprint developed by Professor Renée Cummings to help organisations adopt AI confidently and govern it responsibly. The acronym stands for Governance, Oversight, Value Creation, Ethics and Accountability, Risk Management, and National and Organisational Readiness.
Does Trinidad and Tobago have a national AI strategy?
Trinidad and Tobago has established a dedicated Ministry of AI, but it does not yet have a national strategy to regulate the technology, and the Data Protection Act of 2012 has not been fully enacted. This foundational layer is widely seen as what the country most needs next.
How can a business start governing AI responsibly?
Begin with organisational readiness rather than waiting for national policy: find out what AI currently knows about your organisation, get your data organised and accurate, and make your knowledge structured and auditable. An AI Visibility Audit is a practical first step and doubles as a governance baseline.
Why does data protection matter for AI?
Because AI systems inherit the quality and biases of the data they are built on. Weak data governance translates directly into unfair or unsafe AI outcomes — which is why ‘there is no AI without data’ is the starting point for any governance programme.