Towards Constitutionalized AI Governance in the Commonwealth Caribbean

EDITOR: With the AI-driven Fourth Industrial Revolution now in full swing, artificial intelligence (AI), is rapidly becoming embedded in policing, healthcare, employment, and other critical areas of social life. While the Commonwealth Caribbean lags behind more technologically developed regions in AI uptake and deployment, there have been discernible movements toward a measured socio-technical integration of AI across the region.

Thus far, at least one Commonwealth Caribbean constabulary force has publicly stated its intentions to deploy facial recognition technologies (FRTs) in the fulfilment of its mandate to “serve and protect”.

Despite this commendable thrust towards modernising crime-fighting strategies, commercial FRTs have unfortunately gained notoriety due to their propensity for misidentifying people of colour and women at markedly higher rates, which has led to multiple wrongful arrests and detentions overseas. In small Commonwealth Caribbean states, even wrongful arrests and detentions can occasion significant stigmatisation and ostracism within the wider society.

Given the stakes involved when high-risk AI systems such as FRTs are deployed by institutional actors, the necessity of centring human rights standards and AI ethics principles in AI governance has never been more crucial. At present, the Commonwealth Caribbean notably lacks dedicated human rights-centred AI governance regimes, which can take years to develop and promulgate through regional legislatures. This deficiencyhas produced a glaring AI governance gap that renders fundamental rights acutely vulnerable to algorithmic violation, especially where high-risk AI systems are deployed in sensitive contexts. It is therefore imperative that our region conceptualises creative, yet pragmatic, approaches to AI governance.

To this end, I propose a reimagining of our Commonwealth Caribbean Independence Constitutions—the supreme law and central organizing bedrock of all Commonwealth Caribbean polities—as localized human rights-grounded AI governance regimes that can be repurposed and tailored, through interpretive ingenuity, to safeguard constitutional rights from algorithmic violations in an increasingly digitalised era.