Now that it’s ‘SI’, will the ministry’s name change?

Akash Sama­roo

Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Min­is­ter Do­minic Smith says he will be guid­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Cab­i­net on whether the min­istry’s name will change fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s en­dorse­ment of “Su­per In­tel­li­gence” as a re­place­ment term for Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence.

Smith was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar pub­licly backed US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s call for Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence to in­stead be called Su­per In­tel­li­gence dur­ing her ad­dress to the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA) on Tues­day.

Asked whether the de­vel­op­ment could re­sult in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence be­ing re­named, Smith said the mat­ter would be for the Prime Min­is­ter and Cab­i­net.

“It’s an in­ter­est­ing de­vel­op­ment and it is a demon­stra­tion and in­dica­tive of how quick­ly the tech­nol­o­gy is ad­vanc­ing,” Smith said.

“It cer­tain­ly sig­nals that the Prime Min­is­ter’s vi­sion of the Min­istry has tak­en a glob­al foot­ing and I will be guid­ed by the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter and the Cab­i­net on this once her UN­GA trip is com­plet­ed.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar en­dorsed Trump’s ter­mi­nol­o­gy while out­lin­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pri­or­i­ties as the coun­try pre­pares to take up its non-per­ma­nent seat on the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil in Jan­u­ary 2027.

“We agree with Pres­i­dent Trump’s prac­ti­cal call for Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence to be re­named Su­per In­tel­li­gence,” the Prime Min­is­ter told the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly.

She then adopt­ed the ter­mi­nol­o­gy through­out the tech­nol­o­gy sec­tion of her ad­dress, re­fer­ring to “Su­per In­tel­li­gence” and “SI” while dis­cussing emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies and glob­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said T&T in­tends to en­cour­age greater con­sid­er­a­tion of the im­pli­ca­tions of SI for in­ter­na­tion­al peace and se­cu­ri­ty, in­clud­ing cy­ber­at­tacks, dis­in­for­ma­tion and deep­fakes, au­tonomous weapons, crim­i­nal mis­use of the tech­nol­o­gy and threats to crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture.

She al­so ac­knowl­edged the po­ten­tial ben­e­fits of emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, in­clud­ing their use in con­flict pre­ven­tion, ear­ly warn­ing, peace­keep­ing and the pro­tec­tion of civil­ians.