Beyond warnings: PIOJ and AI planning

 THE EDITOR, Madam:

The recent warning by the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) about the disruptive impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the workforce is important. However, if the institute is to fully fulfil its mandate as the country’s principal strategic planning body, it must move beyond identifying the threat of job displacement and begin articulating a coherent national response to the AI era.

Artificial intelligence is not merely another technological upgrade; it is reshaping the meaning of work, expertise, productivity, and institutional value.

For decades, many assumed automation would mainly threaten repetitive manual labour. The PIOJ now correctly acknowledges that AI increasingly extends into cognitive professions once considered secure, including clerical administration, accounting, legal drafting, actuarial analysis, customer service, education, and even aspects of healthcare.

This presents a profound challenge for Jamaica. Much of the country’s post-1990 economic strategy has depended on service-sector expansion, outsourcing, and credential-based administrative labour. Entire pathways of upward mobility were built around office work and procedural knowledge — sectors now highly vulnerable to AI disruption.

However, the deeper issue is not technological, but philosophical and institutional.

AI exposes a long-standing weakness in modern education and economic systems: too many individuals are trained for functional efficiency rather than adaptability, creativity, ethics, and interdisciplinary thinking. Machines excel where human labour is reduced to predictable patterns; where work is procedural, AI becomes competitive.

The PIOJ’s responsibility must therefore extend beyond economic forecasting. Jamaica requires a national developmental philosophy for the AI age — one that includes ethical AI governance, educational transformation, psychological resilience, protection against technological inequality, and expansion of cultural and creative industries.

The danger is that the country may respond with narrow ‘skills training’ initiatives, while ignoring the broader social transformation under way. Digital literacy and coding programmes alone cannot address a reality in which machines increasingly replicate cognitive functions.

Historically, societies that withstand technological revolutions are those that preserve social cohesion, dignity, and institutional trust during periods of rapid change.

The AI revolution demands no less.

DUDLEY MCLEAN