In our July 2023 Community Chat, and with members of the Caribbean tech community, Bianca Welds, Digital Innovation Manager of the VM Group in Jamaica, and Chad Fraser, the Founder of Sonover Inc. in Grenada, the panel discusses: Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models, how can the Caribbean business and education sectors extract value from these technologies; and thereafter, how can Caribbean countries better nurture software development?

 

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In less than a year, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become so integrated into our lives that many of us have begun to forget what life was like before generative AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, Bard, DALL-E, Midjourney, and DeepMind, became publicly accessible. These tools have been simplifying certain tasks and have replaced the human effort, which is leading us to re-examine longstanding attitudes and views on a broad range of issues, such as the skills we truly need to possess and the value of what we as humans can contribute when technology is doing most of the ‘work’.

In a different vein, the region has been advocating for a greater focus on software development and they have trying to implement programmes that introduce software coding in secondary, and even primary, schools. However, is a focus on coding enough to foster entrepreneurship and wealth creation, or even our ability to capitalise on the opportunities that will be ushered in by AI?

These are just a few of the underlying thoughts for the topics that are discussed in this month’s Community Chat.

 

Introducing our guests

Bianca Welds is a technology professional with a passion for innovation and entrepreneurial thinking and the heart of a creative. She has worked in the public and private sectors in technology, business and the arts. She has brought a background working with entrepreneurs and start-ups in technology and the creative industries to her current focus on corporate innovation and digital transformation as Digital Innovation Manager of the VM Group. A creative thinker and passionate technology community leader, she has presented to local and international audiences on business model innovation, community building, and the intersections of the arts and technology.

Chad Fraser is the Founder of Sonover Inc., a Grenada-based software company that partners with organisations regionally and Internationally to facilitate their planning, design, development and implementation of digital transformation initiatives. He also established Qualishore a Business Process Outsourcing provider that emphasises the use of technology in its offerings. His professional experience spans ICT solutions development, research and advisory, business process reengineering, digital transformation consultation, IT Strategy, governance and quality assurance.

 

This month’s Community Chat topics

Typically, we have three topics with our guests proposing at least two of them. However, this month, both Bianca and Chad proposed AI: Bianca wanted to focus on the education sector; Chad, the business sector. However, both of them wanted to move the conversation beyond the hype and the headlines and explore ways in which AI and other advanced technologies could be leveraged. We thus settled on the topic, AI and LLMs, how can the Caribbean business and education sectors extract value from these technologies?, with a focus on the two sectors Bianca and Chad had proposed.

Our second topic emerged out of the recent launch of Developers’ Hub (D’Hub) by the Government of Trinidad and Tobago. D’Hub is a developers’ hub platform that is designed to enable, support and host local and prospective software developers. Among other things, the platform will be offering training and provide a virtual workspace, as well as opportunities to work on projects and build solutions for the Government in its digital transformation efforts.

Across the Caribbean region, countries are eager to strengthen and increase their cohort of software developers and citizens possessing software development skills to position their workforce for the future. As a result, they have engaged in a variety of initiatives to nurture software development, with varying degrees of success. Hence, d’Hub was the impetus for the question, How can Caribbean countries better nurture software development?, through which both Bianca and Chad as long-time software developers could offer their views and perspective.

 

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Let’s make it happen!

 

Select links

Below are links to some of the organisations and resources that either were mentioned during the episode or otherwise, might be useful:

 

 

Images credit:  B Welds;  C Fraser; ThisIsEngineering (Pexels);  Gerd Altmann (Pixabay); D koi  (Unsplash)

Music credit: The Last Word (Oui Ma Chérie), by Andy Narrell

Podcast editing support:  Mayra Bonilla Lopez