A Caribbean AI question
The global AI conversation is not culturally neutral. Systems are trained, governed and commercialized within particular institutional and linguistic contexts. Caribbean educators and institutions therefore need more than access to AI tools. They need a position on what responsible participation should mean for our knowledge, language, education and future-making.
From consumption to authorship
Barbados should not enter the AI age as a passive consumer of imported systems, assumptions and pedagogies. It should participate as a producer of scholarship, frameworks, tools and culturally grounded practice. This is an argument for intellectual agency: the ability to use global technologies without surrendering the right to define local problems, values and priorities.
Academic identity
Generative AI can enrich scholarship, but it can also create new forms of dependence when researchers rely on external systems to frame questions, select language or synthesize knowledge without critical scrutiny. Caribbean academic identity therefore depends partly on retaining authorship over the questions we ask and the concepts we develop.
Education and voice
When AI becomes a dominant source of explanation for students, it can influence what counts as authoritative knowledge. Educators must help learners compare sources, recognize cultural absence, question assumptions and maintain their own intellectual voice.
Governance and mitigation
Governance risks can be mitigated through clear acceptable-use policies, privacy protections, human oversight, transparency, assessment redesign, staff and student AI literacy, bias awareness and periodic review. Good governance does not eliminate uncertainty; it creates structures for responsible judgment.
Research directions
This collection includes work on AI identity for Caribbean educators, threats to academic identity, the classroom influence of AI systems and the broader question of what a Caribbean approach to generative AI might look like.
This work forms part of the wider AI Masters Barbados scholarship programme. For lectures, seminars, institutional discussions or research collaboration, request a session.
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