From 2026, strate­gies to em­bold­en many of T&T’s top in­dus­tries through the use of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) will be stud­ied at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.

On Fri­day com­ing, the pub­lic will be of­fi­cial­ly in­tro­duced to the Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence In­no­va­tion Cen­tre (AI­IC), which has been tasked with ad­vanc­ing sev­er­al of the Caribbean’s ma­jor in­dus­tries, from cre­ative arts to re­new­able en­er­gy.

“As you know, UWI has a re­gion­al man­date. I think that every­one, all of the view­ers and us, I think we can agree that ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence is both an en­abler and an in­dus­try at the same time.”

“So cur­rent­ly, the Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence In­no­va­tion Cen­tre is the largest AI, re­search and de­vel­op­ment com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion and train­ing cen­tre in the Caribbean. We are housed right here at St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, and our mis­sion is to ad­vance re­search and in­no­va­tion in in­tel­li­gent sys­tems, in­te­grat­ed en­abling tech­nol­o­gy, “ said Dr Craig Ram­lal, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the AI­IC.

“It means that we are build­ing the foun­da­tion­al en­abling tech­nol­o­gy here from scratch. We build any­thing from large lan­guage mod­els to hard­ware and ro­bot­ic sys­tems. We are ad­vanc­ing cut­ting-edge re­search in in­dus­tries that we be­lieve the re­gion has a com­pet­i­tive edge in, so things like agri­cul­ture to cre­ative arts, the in­dus­tries, the en­er­gy sec­tor and so on.” he said.

The AI­IC is set to col­lab­o­rate with around 20 to 30 part­ners, in­clud­ing var­i­ous Cari­com gov­ern­ments, pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ties, NGOs, and mul­ti­lat­er­als, to digi­tise ma­te­ri­als, de­vel­op AI strate­gies and pro­vide train­ing pro­grammes to achieve these goals.

Dr Ram­lal ex­plained that the cen­tre’s part­ner­ships with mul­ti­lat­er­als like Cari­com, CPI, and UNI­PAR, and the in­volve­ment of these part­ners in var­i­ous projects were tied to the recog­ni­tion that the tech­nol­o­gy had be­come a ne­ces­si­ty in the de­vel­op­ment of in­dus­tries in the re­gion.

“I think we can agree that no dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion or slow dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion will lead us to na­tion­al or even re­gion­al com­pet­i­tive loss. Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is a very key pil­lar to aid in ease of do­ing busi­ness, to aid in di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, among oth­er things. And now in these re­cent times, what has ac­cel­er­at­ed, and I think ac­cel­er­at­ing this dis­course, is when we add AI to the mix,” he said.

Ram­lal said the cen­tre has nine re­search clus­ters cur­rent­ly with plans to ex­pand.

How­ev­er he high­light­ed pro­grammes that are of ma­jor in­ter­est for T&T and the re­gion cur­rent­ly.

“For re­new­able en­er­gy, we have a re­search clus­ter called In­tel­li-Grid, and they are look­ing at re­new­able en­er­gy op­ti­mi­sa­tion. How do you look at re­new­able en­er­gy dis­patch for the grids and so on? When you put these sys­tems on, how do you look at the vir­tu­al in­er­tia that is in­volved there? They are do­ing fan­tas­tic. They have mul­ti­ple part­ner­ships with oth­er uni­ver­si­ties around the world do­ing that,” he said.

The cen­tre al­so ac­knowl­edged cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty as cru­cial, giv­en that the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can com­pa­nies have been a ma­jor tar­get for cy­ber­at­tacks in re­cent years.

Ram­lal said, “We al­so have cy­ber an­a­lyt­ics as an­oth­er re­search clus­ter. They are study­ing how AI is used to at­tack prop­er sys­tems right now, bank sys­tems. How it can be used to at­tack gov­ern­ment sys­tems, and how we pro­tect our sys­tems against those things. What we have hap­pen­ing is a case where AI is now learn­ing and de­ploy­ing its own at­tack method­olo­gies, its own at­tack vec­tors, with­out much hu­man in­ter­ven­tion, which is quite scary. And so they are re­search­ing, how do we de­fend against that?”

The UWI team is al­so look­ing at strate­gies which could be used to bol­ster the agri­cul­ture sec­tor giv­en con­cerns about food se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion.

This is a mas­sive, mas­sive thing that we have stopped to ex­plore. We have two labs that are fo­cused on that. One of them is called light­ning, and they do ex­act­ly that, they make ar­ti­fi­cial light­ning. And so what they have start­ed to do is make fer­tilis­er from wa­ter and at­mos­pher­ic air. So they will dis­solve fer­tilis­er from air and con­vert ni­tro­gen in­to ni­trates, and dis­solve it in­to wa­ter to be used in crops, and then con­trol the con­cen­tra­tion of the ni­trates in the wa­ter to fer­tilise the crops.”

The cen­tre will of­fer cours­es, many of which will start from Sep­tem­ber next year.

Dr. Ram­lal said,”With the cen­tre and the De­part­ment of Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er En­gi­neer­ing, we are re­leas­ing five post­grad­u­ate pro­grammes, a post­grad­u­ate cer­tifi­cate, a post­grad­u­ate diplo­ma, Mas­ters of Ap­plied Sci­ence, a Mas­ter’s of Phi­los­o­phy and a doc­tor­al pro­gramme in AI. “

He con­tin­ued, “These are very tech­ni­cal de­grees. We build the tech­ni­cal de­grees first be­cause we need that base­line tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty of AI in the re­gion, so that peo­ple could go in­to the work­force and de­vel­op these sys­tems.”

The es­tab­lish­ment of the cen­tre, Dr Ram­lal ex­plained, can be traced back sev­er­al years.

“It start­ed in 2018 when I found­ed the in­tel­li­gence sys­tems lab,” said Ram­lal, who ex­plained that the de­part­ment in­vest­ed in and con­tin­ued to build a su­per­com­put­er, which now will form the core of the AI­IC.

“I think we are 56 mem­bers or some­thing now, which al­lows us to be this size. And so there has been sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in terms of fund­ing, mon­ey that went in­to de­vel­op­ment of the com­put­er, as well as pay­ment of staff and so on,” said Dr. Ram­lal, “We have this aim that we must al­ways meet the per­son on the ground. So we prac­tice some­thing called ‘2R to C’. It means rapid re­search to com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion. That means that all clus­ters must de­vel­op some sort of com­mer­cial prod­uct or some sort of ini­tia­tive that ben­e­fits the peo­ple on the ground near im­me­di­ate­ly. And that keeps us sus­tain­able. So the fi­nanc­ing mod­el is one where we have an ini­tial in­vest­ment, and now we have one of sus­tain­abil­i­ty. So just bring­ing in more cap­i­tal to sus­tain, but there must be some ben­e­fit there, be­cause we are still in a uni­ver­si­ty, and the pur­pose of the uni­ver­si­ty is to ben­e­fit the peo­ple.”

The AI­IC will be launched next Fri­day, De­cem­ber 12 at the Radis­son Ho­tel in Port of Spain.

About Dr Ram­lal

Dr. Craig Ram­lal is both the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the AI­IC, at the UWI and the head of the Con­trol Sys­tems Group in the De­part­ment of Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er En­gi­neer­ing, Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing , at the UWI St. Au­gus­tine. In 2023, the Unit­ed Na­tions rec­og­nized him as a pre­em­i­nent AI leader (https://www.un.org/en/ai-ad­vi­so­ry-body/about), ap­point­ing him to the Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al’s High-Lev­el Ad­vi­so­ry Body on Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence. He is a thought leader on AI de­vel­op­ments in the re­gion, hav­ing con­tributed to the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union, Cari­com, Cari­com IM­PACS, the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank, UN­ESCO among oth­ers.

He al­so led the de­vel­op­ment of sev­er­al UWI post­grad­u­ate de­grees at the UWI, in­clud­ing the Post­grad­u­ate Cer­tifi­cate (PGCert) in AI, Post­grad­u­ate Diplo­ma (PGDip) in AI, Mas­ter of Ap­plied Sci­ence (MASc) in AI, Mas­ter of Phi­los­o­phy (MPhil) in AI and Doc­tor of Phi­los­o­phy (PhD) in AI. Dr. Ram­lal earned his BSc, MASc, and PhD in Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er En­gi­neer­ing through split-site by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Trinidad and To­ba­go, and King Fahd Uni­ver­si­ty of Pe­tro­le­um and Min­er­als, Sau­di Ara­bia. His re­search fo­cus­es on con­trol strate­gies, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, and game-the­o­ret­ic sys­tems.