The Transformative Power of Artificial Intelligence

Now in the world of AI, and that’s the world in which we now inhabit, as I walked in, I saw a very handsome chap on the screen called Reggie, who was saying welcome to me. Now I’m a politician first and foremost, so my initial instinct was how do I get Reggie registered to vote. But beyond Reggie’s registration as a voter, it tells us that AI is progressing. And AI is progressing at such a rapid rate that it is difficult even for countries in what we refer to as the developed world to keep up and to keep track. Some people fear that. Some people see the emergence of AI as a risk in and of itself. I think we need to see it as an opportunity. 

An opportunity to help us as regulators do a better job at what we do. An opportunity as regulators to be more precise, to use the tools that are now available, and the tools that become more available daily to do a better job at what we do. One of the things, for example, that I’ve been discussing with the team here in Nevis is whether we can now start to accept documentation in foreign languages. Under our regulations, they say English, English, and only English. 

The question is why. There’s a whole world out there which is not an English-speaking world. And the response that you normally get is our staff are conversant with English; we don’t speak Mandarin, we don’t speak Spanish, we don’t speak these other languages. But AI does, or AI can. And so that in and of itself is one opportunity where we can start to say, hey, maybe we can accept documentation in other languages because we can use these tools to give us an immediate English translation which doesn’t slow down our work but makes life a lot easier in terms of what we do. AI, I think, has the opportunity to transform your job by allowing you to do it more efficiently, more effectively, and as these tools become more sophisticated, and they are, certainly almost on a daily basis. 

Many of you, if you’re like me, you were accustomed to ChatGPT, I think it’s called. And then I paid and I got some advanced version of it, and I thought that this was it. You know, I was in the vanguard of the AI movement. And then somebody mentioned something called Claude, and then there are other open-source AI tools, and it’s all rather confusing for somebody at my age, but I think for those of you who are in this industry, it really creates tremendous opportunity. And so yes, AI will present challenges. Yes, in this world we are seeing more business, and more business sometimes translates into more risk. But I also think that AI can be harnessed to allow us to manage that risk, and to do our jobs more effectively and more efficiently. And so my simple message in my brief opening remarks is that we ought not to be fearful of the future. 

Thats what we need to do is to use events like this, to use conferences like this, engagements like this, talking to each other to better prepare ourselves for a future that is really now. Because no sooner have we mastered some tools, we recognize that other tools are emerging, and emerging at a frenetic pace. And so the reality for us is that we are now in a world where we need to keep abreast of what’s happening. And what’s happening changes almost on a daily basis. And I think that that is our new reality. And we either run away from it and be afraid of it, or we embrace it. And so I don’t think that there’s any room to be fearful. I think what we need to do is at every opportunity when we have chances like this to educate ourselves, to mix and mingle and rub shoulders with the professionals, that we do that, and that we continually prepare, continually engage, and by so doing better equip ourselves to deal with that future that is now.