Basil Jarrett | America’s AI education push: Lessons for Jamaica’s future

LAST WEEK, while scrolling mindlessly through yet another Instagram feed, I came across a story on something quite interesting coming out of the good old US of A.

Among the conspiracy theories, bad spelling, and daily prayer chains, a Washington Post article announced that Donald Trump’s latest executive order was directed at creating official policy to advance AI education in schools.

If you missed it, you could be forgiven as the announcement came, sans the usual media and blood pressure spike that accompanies anything the Donald does. This certainly wouldn’t dominate headlines and breaking news stories, but what the United States just did, setting national policy to integrate AI into schools, train teachers, and prepare kids for the AI-driven world, is something that I have long advocated for here in Jamaica.

You see, while we’re still trying to decide whether a tablet in every classroom was a good idea, the rest of the world is moving on to the next big revolution, artificial intelligence.

The US’ position outlines a very simple but powerful idea: Train the teachers, teach the students, and start building a workforce that doesn’t get left behind when AI comes to claim its due.

By pumping resources into AI literacy from as early as grade school, setting up public-private partnerships, launching national AI challenges, and getting serious about teacher training, the US is making AI a normal, everyday part of learning, not some mystical thing that only techies in Silicon Valley understand.

But back home in Jamaica, we’re still debating whether or not ChatGPT is “cheating” or “just smart studying”. Spoiler alert, it’s a bit of both.

THE WARNING SIGNS ARE EVERYWHERE

Unfortunately, however, we don’t have the luxury of being slow on this one. Just last month, the World Economic Forum estimated that up to 41 per cent of existing jobs globally could be “restructured” (read: disappear) because of AI. Our banks are already using AI to detect fraud, insurance companies are using AI to process claims and marketing agencies are using AI to generate content. And soon enough, even the public sector will realise that AI doesn’t go on sick leave, doesn’t need a pension, and doesn’t grumble about back pay.

And if you are a parent reading this today, here’s the uncomfortable truth: the job your child is studying for right now might not exist by the time they graduate. Unless, of course, we make radical changes.

MOVING FORWARD

There are a few key lessons therefore that we must draw from America’s recent AI education strategy. The first is that teacher training is everything. It makes no sense to dump AI tools into classrooms if teachers don’t know how to use them. We made that mistake with computers, tablets, and even smartboards during various experiments in the past. Training isn’t a side dish, it’s the main course.

Teachers must be equipped, not just with devices, but with the mindset and skills to integrate AI into lesson planning, grading, student engagement, and even ethics discussions. Accordingly, AI literacy must start early. AI is not just about coding. It’s about problem-solving, critical thinking, understanding data, ethics, creativity, and collaboration. Our students need to learn, from primary school up, not just how AI works, but how it should be used responsibly. Waiting until university is too late.

The other key point is that government, private sector and schools must work together to chart this way forward. Tech companies, banks, media houses, BPOs, universities, and even NGOs have a role to play in supporting AI education and to generate funding, training, and curriculum development. In doing so, we must also incorporate strong conversations around data privacy, bias in algorithms, misinformation, and how AI can be used for both good and harm.

Ten years from now, our economy could well be dominated by industries we never properly prepared our kids for, such as data science, robotics, AI customer service and cybersecurity. We may end up stuck importing foreign consultants and experts while thousands of our brilliant young people are unemployed or underemployed because they were trained for a world that no longer exists. Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? But so did the internet when it first came. So did electricity. So did motorcars. So did Netflix replacing Blockbuster. In other words, the future doesn’t wait for anyone.

THE CHOICE IS OURS

We can therefore either treat AI like a passing fad and be crushed under its wheel, or we can treat it like the opportunity of a lifetime and ride it into a new era of growth and innovation. The Americans and the Chinese have already chosen. The Europeans are choosing now. The question for us is what will Jamaica do? If we’re not careful, the digital future will pass us by, while we’re still busy trying to figure out how to unblock the Wi-Fi.

Major Basil Jarrett is the director of communications at the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) and crisis communications consultant. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Threads @IamBasilJarrett and linkedin.com/in/basiljarrett. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com