CARICOM Countries at Meeting to Discuss Artificial Intelligence

NEW YORK, New York – Three Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries have attended a meeting to advance a shared roadmap for broad and safe adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in Latin America and the Caribbean and help unlock productivity across the region.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) said that Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali, his Surinamese counterpart, Jennifer Geerlings-Simons and Bahamian Minister of Innovation, Sebastian Bastia; attended the event that was held on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

It said that the other countries represented at the talks were Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

According to the IDB, they met with senior executives from Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Nvidia, calling for the development of a regional mechanism that would embed a common strategy and joint investment guidelines.

It said that they also addressed the foundations required for successful and responsible AI adoption, including institutions and regulation, talent and skills, digital infrastructure and data systems, dissemination of technology across governments, firms, and workers, and potential risks.

The urgency of the discussion was informed by the findings of the forthcoming IDB flagship report, “From Digitalization to Artificial Intelligence: Turning Promises into Productivity,” to be published in November. The report is the 2026 edition of the Development in the Americas (DIA) series.

According to the report, broad adoption of AI and large labor-productivity effects could raise regional gross domestic product (GDP) by 5.1 per cent after a decade. With limited adoption and small productivity effects, GDP would rise by only 0.3 per cent.

The study also examines how worker mobility can shape the distribution of AI’s benefits. The IDB said that wages could increase by 2.3 per cent to 5.3 per cent over a decade if workers move into expanding job areas, but could fall by 13.5 per cent to 20.9 per cent if they cannot, underscoring the importance of policies that help workers adapt.

AI has the potential to transform the region’s economies, but any potential gains will depend on policy decisions made today and countries’ ability to scale adoption across the public and private sectors, the report argues. AI is already delivering measurable results, including reducing exclusion errors in social protection programs, improving public safety outcomes, and increasing worker productivity.