For decades, the Caribbean has relied significantly on digital technologies developed elsewhere, systems trained on foreign data, designed for foreign economies, and governed by foreign policies. The launch of the Artificial Intelligence Innovation Centre (AIIC) signals a deliberate shift away from that dependence.
Established at The UWI St Augustine campus, the AIIC was created to build local capacity in artificial intelligence research, ethics, and application, ensuring that emerging technologies serve regional priorities.
Leading this effort is Dr Craig Ramlal, Executive Director of the AIIC, whose work bridges advanced technical research with global policy development. For Ramlal, the centre’s mission is urgent.
“We cannot drive sustainability or competitiveness without building our own AI systems,” he says. “There is room for both external private enterprise AI systems and for local purpose-built systems. A common misconception as well is that AI is only software, but in reality it also includes hardware like robotics, drones and semiconductors.”
He adds that across sectors such as tourism, agriculture and the creative industries, other regions are already using region-specific AI and autonomous systems to optimise performance and productivity.
“No one will build that for us, it is difficult for international private organisations to target all problems and needs, especially of smaller markets, and that’s the gap we must address.”
Global tools are needed because they bring productivity at scale, but the region must manage them carefully as imported tools can bring hidden costs.
“For systems not built to our contexts or trained with our data, we either deal with bad fits or pay extra to customise them, using foreign exchange we don’t have,” Ramlal says. For him, the point isn’t to reject global tools, but to use them wisely.
More importantly, he warns of data dependence. “We have to be clear on the data terms. If we don’t set strong rules for how our data is used and shared, we can lose control over information that should remain ours. We want to get the value of modern tools while protecting our interests.”This is why the AIIC is developing a Caribbean foundational AI model trained on regional data from scratch and optimised for automation.
“It won’t be frontier model-scale or anything within that category” he clarifies. “But it will be purpose-built for our needs.”
In a deliberate move, the centre plans to release the model freely to industry. “Use it. Sell with it. Build with it. No IP restrictions,” he says. “This is a gift to the region.”
Why give it away? His answer is simple: “As a university, our job is to solve problems for the people and the society we reside in.”
In 2010, Dr Ramlal completed his undergraduate thesis focused on artificial intelligence, followed by a master’s degree with a thesis in intelligent control systems. By the age of 23, he was publishing research on optimisation and control laws, work he describes as “a precursor to reinforcement learning, which underpins most modern AI training algorithms.”
As his technical work progressed, Ramlal noticed a troubling gap.
“In the region, people were doing AI research,” he explains, “but it wasn’t translating into the commercial space or industry.”
That realisation led to the creation of the Intelligent Systems Lab (ISL) in 2018, an unofficial research group housed in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
“We started with three members,” he recalls. “All our meetings were in my office.”
The early years were difficult. “Industry wasn’t interested,” he says. “In 2019, nobody wanted to use neural networks. Writing the term ‘artificial intelligence’ in most journals was also not well accepted. Supporting postgraduate researchers was hard. People just didn’t trust these systems or their integration into their processes.”
Still, he refused to abandon the effort.
A major turning point came in 2023 when Dr Ramlal contributed to drafting the CARICOM IMPACS Declaration on Autonomous Weapons Systems. During the same year, he was recognised as a preeminent AI leader by the United Nations and appointed to the Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence.
“That changed everything,” he says. “Suddenly, UWI and the ISL had international recognition.”
As part of that advisory body, he contributed to the governing AI for humanity guidelines and recommendations that were adopted by all member states at the 79th UN General Assembly in September 2024. Some of the recommendations were later advanced into implementation during the 80th UN General Assembly in 2025.
At UWI, Campus Principal Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine advocated for the lab to become a campus centre. Dr Ramlal was persuaded by her argument that artificial intelligence should not be confined to engineering alone.
“She said AI shouldn’t be siloed. It has to cross all faculties. It has to be for everyone,” he says.
In July 2025, the ISL was officially upgraded. “The Principal messaged me at 7:30 pm,” he remembers. “It was my mother’s birthday. The whole family was celebrating.”
Today, the AIIC has grown to 56 members, making it the largest AI research centre in the Caribbean.
“It’s hard to ignore us now,” he says.
Regional AI capacity building remains central to the AIIC’s work. “We’re building the Caribbean AI Talent Exchange,” Ramlal explains. “Regional companies need a standard way to assess AI skills that right now doesn’t exist and to do so from a trusted entity.”
The centre also supports postgraduate programmes including PG Dip, MASc, MPhil and PhD pathways in AI, while launching a new interdisciplinary MSc for non-technical professionals.
“We are looking at AI and policy, AI and climate, AI and project management,” he notes.
Ethics remains central to the centre’s vision. “Ethics is usually qualitative,” he explains. “But that doesn’t stand up in court. Our researchers are developing quantitative frameworks for AI safety and accountability. We want systems we can explain, test, and very importantly, rely on.”
Looking ahead, Ramlal envisions a future where the Caribbean stands at the forefront of artificial intelligence research and application.
“I want to see us at the frontier of innovation and technology,” he says. “We have lost a major opportunity to capitalise on the last AI cycle, but we have the capacity within the region to research, build, govern and use AI systems that reflect our realities and solve the problems of our own people.”
He continues, “We need to strategically focus on an enabling ecosystem now: we need collaboration among universities, government, public and private sector; we need to build the hardware and software of AI for our region, and then export our technology into external markets. This way we won’t be watching the next AI wave pass by. We’ll be shaping it.”
