The Tribune

BY FAY SIMMONS

TRIBUNE Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

THE GOVERNMENT is preparing to spend $3m from an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) loan on technology and artificial intelligence (AI) training as it seeks to prepare Bahamians for jobs emerging from the digital economy.

Sebas Bastian, minister of innovation and national development, said the investment would support both basic artificial intelligence (AI) literacy and more advanced training aimed at helping Bahamians develop and create technology.

“One of the first things we did, as one of the first Cabinet papers I passed through Cabinet, was on approval to spend $3m out of that same IDB loan you talked about to build capacity,” said Mr Bastian.

He added that the Government could not simply introduce new technology without also ensuring Bahamians have the skills needed to use and develop it.

“If we're going to just start building up all kind of tools and training people to use tools, we're missing a golden opportunity of what's truly possible for our citizens,” he said.

Mr Bastian said the training programme would include opportunities for members of the public to learn how to use AI tools as well as how to develop and create products using the technology.

“In a very short time, we will start to announce what these various training opportunities are going to be to the general public, and it is going to be a combination of training people on tools, and it's going to be also training people how to develop and create things using AI,” he added.

Mr Bastian said AI represented an opportunity to broaden access to technology and entrepreneurship because the cost and infrastructure required to develop software has fallen significantly. “Technology has a lot of capabilities, and one of them is democratising opportunity,” he added.

The minister said the country also needs to rethink how it prepares workers for a rapidly-changing economy, arguing that traditional four-year education pathways could be too slow to respond to emerging skills requirements.

“What we've seen is that our educational system over time has been a little slow to react to the job demand, and I think that is the gap that we have to concentrate on closing,” Mr Bastian said.

“For some professions, it's going to be highly unreasonable for us to expect that we're going to respond to rapid changing technologies with four-year journeys.”

Mr Bastian said The Bahamas should not abandon degree-based education but combine it with shorter, skills-based training. “We have to expand our mindset from a degree-based economy, and also realise that we also need a skill-based economy and blend both if we really want prosperity,” he said.

The Davis administration is partnering with General Assembly on skills training, with Mr Bastian saying its programmes are designed around global job demand.

He said the curriculum was developed by examining areas where businesses were struggling to find qualified workers and combining that information with international data.

Mr Bastian also acknowledged the potential for AI to displace some jobs but argued that the focus should be on preparing workers for new roles created by technological change. “Innovation has always impacted jobs, always. AI is no different,” he said. “What we cannot miss is preparing citizens for those jobs.