When headlines in major global newspapers trumpet artificial intelligence as the engine driving economic growth, it is easy for smaller economies to feel urgency — even panic. If Silicon Valley is sprinting ahead, if Wall Street is pouring billions into AI infrastructure, then surely we must follow.
Or so the narrative goes.
But Jamaica must pause before we copy and paste another country’s economic obsession into our own blueprint. We cannot afford to run go a foreign inna wi mind while Half-Way Tree traffic still jams, while land papers still take too long to process, while ordinary people are trying to build steady lives on solid ground.
Recent international analyses suggested that massive investment in artificial intelligence contributed little or nothing to real economic growth in the United States last year, despite enormous spending. That should not frighten us. It should clarify us.
Because Jamaica’s economic context is fundamentally different.
We are not a trillion-dollar technolog…
