Jamaica does not have the luxury of fearing advanced artificial intelligence. More than any algorithm, we should fear being poor, vulnerable, inefficient, and leaving an inheritance of indebtedness for future generations.
While the world witnessed the splendor of Artemis II sending humans back to the Moon with the precision of advanced systems, we are still trying to boost our national economy from the launchpad, with digital engines that remain largely disconnected from the wheels of productivity. What is required now is a clear shift in mindset: away from treating AI as a chatbot novelty and towards leveraging it as a genuine engine of prosperity. AI agents can provide both navigation and momentum but only if we move beyond the rhetoric of “digital transformation” and start executing with real architecture and intent. The fear that AI will take our jobs is a distraction from the bitter reality that our jobs aren’t paying enough to sustain a middle class or make Jamaica the place of choice to live, work, and raise families.
Overequipped but Underperforming
Even as this opportunity sits within reach, evidence shows that we are drifting in the opposite direction. The UNESCO Artificial Intelligence Readiness Assessment (RAM) Report, launched April 2026, confirmed our precarious position. Jamaica sits 13th of 19 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, trailing neighbours like the Dominican Republic. And since 2022, the gap between our local AI talent and the global average has increased. It is untenable. The report also exposed an unsurprising paradox: our productivity crisis is not a hardware problem but an application problem.
· We aren’t lacking Internet access.We enjoy close to 83 per cent penetration.
· We have over 3.1 million cellular connections, a 112 per cent mobile penetration for just over 2.8 million people.
· We have a Data Protection Act – a key pillar.
Currently, nearly every man, woman, and child has a supercomputer in their hand, but we lack the “absorptive capacity” to turn connectivity into wealth. In other words, we have engines at our fingertips but can’t even press gas. In economic terms, it is digital readiness without velocity. There is connectivity and legal scaffolding but no coordination, urgency, or clear direction to defined outcomes.
The Shift from Assistant to Agent
As we struggle to convert access to output, the external pressures are building. Data from the World Bank and OpenAI show that up to 85 per cent of workers could see at least 10 per cent of their tasks impacted by large language models, with a significant share of that facing deeper disruption. More aggressively, some tech leaders have warned of a ‘destructive gap’ between 2027 and 2030 where AI systems outpace economic adaption, leaving entire segments of the workforce exposed.
With GDP per capita at US$8,000, we have no basis to resist that shift in defense of low-productivity work.
A highly optimistic projection from the World Economic Forum is a net gain of 170 million new roles globally, but those roles will NOT go to countries waiting on physical signatures from justices of the peace for basic identity verification. Agentic societies are already solving this differently, using digital identity systems that replace physical witnessing and trusted digital credentials to eliminate manual verification.
Our sleeping productivity tiger goes far beyond using tools like Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT to write captions or emails. That is still the “assistant” model, where the human does the heavy lifting, manually moving data from point A to point B. Agentic AI is fundamentally different. It executes goals, not just prompts. If you instruct an AI agent to “onboard a new client”, it does not stop at drafting a welcome letter. It verifies digital identity, sets up billing in your accounting system, schedules kickoff meetings, and flags missing documentation. This is no longer the work moving faster. It can move without you. In fact, real-world practice is already redefining business. The new emerging class of entrepreneurs is one that manages zero employees but commands a fleet of advanced AI agents operating with precision and scale. In this model, the “team” is no longer human-heavy but a coordinated system of specialised agents, e.g.:
1. A sales agent researches and qualifies leads, solves their specific pain points, sends emails and books meetings based on calendar availability, while the owner sleeps.
2. An operations agent manages administrative work, automates workflows once requiring constant check-ins or documents to be scanned. It handles cross-platform workflows, automating links that used to need phone calls
3. A development agent is an autonomous coding partner, building and maintaining digital systems without a full-time engineering payroll.
For a Jamaican business owner, it is the ultimate productivity renaissance. Instead of hiring five people for administrative support, a job highly exposed to automation, the owner deploys a digital workforce that operates continuously, without fatigue or delay, competing directly with a mid-sized firm in London or Miami.
National Scale, Top of Form, Bottom of Form
Perhaps the most radical power of AI agents in our context is its objectivity and ability to overcome social-capital deficits. Even eliminating the need for a personal “link” to get basic documents signed, processed, or approved. AI agents are also blind to status. They don’t prioritise a government minister’s cousin over a small farmer. They don’t ask for a “ting” to move a file to the top of the pile or take five working days to reply. Agentic systems remove bottlenecks, administrative friction, and democratise efficiency.
That is why the stakes are so high. The World Bank has already warned that clerical and customer service roles – the backbone of the BPO sector – are most exposed. Low-cost labour that simply follows instructions is easily replaced. This is why the UNESCO report’s call for AI education at the vocational level is not a nice ‘to do’. It is our lifeline.
Pivoting HEART Trust towards agentic operations means teaching youth to direct rather than code. It means moving from a nation of workers to a nation of agent architects. In that shift, a young person in rural Jamaica, equipped with a “ghost team”, is no longer limited by geography but empowered to be self-employed, export high-value services, and earn in foreign currency.
This is how we level the playing field. This is how we strip busy work of its value and replace it with strategic output. And this is how we position our people collectively to compete and win on a global stage.
One love,
Yaneek Page is the programme lead for Market Entry USA and a certified trainer in entrepreneurship.
