Governing the Black Box

The rules for artificial intelligence are being written in Brussels, Strasbourg, Washington, Seoul and Beijing. None of them was written for the Caribbean. Governing the Black Box is written for the people who will write the Caribbean's own.

It sets out the law in all five centres: the EU AI Act, the Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence, executive action and state law in the United States, Korea's AI Basic Act and China's rules. Then it reads them from the Commonwealth Caribbean, on two pillars. Rights, for the people about whom automated systems now decide. Content, for the works models are trained on and the works they produce.

The cases are already setting the terms: Republic v Tools for Humanity in Kenya, Getty Images v Stability AI in London, Bartz v Anthropic in the United States. The book reads each of them from the region.

It brings Caribbean thought to the question. The plantation-economy theory of Lloyd Best and Kari Levitt is applied to the data on which models are trained. The savings-clause jurisprudence of the Caribbean Court of Justice is read alongside the new law of AI rights.

It ends with drafting text, not commentary: a CARICOM Model AI Act, printed in full, for drafters to adopt, adapt or contest.

Built for citation: 824 numbered paragraphs, cited by chapter and paragraph, with tables of cases and legislation and an index keyed to paragraph numbers. For legislative drafters, regulators, attorneys-at-law, compliance officers and scholars, and for those who advise Caribbean governments and firms.

A small state cannot opt out of artificial intelligence. It can decide the terms on which it lives with it.

Robert D. Forrester, LL.B., is author and publisher at The Sovereign Press, Georgetown.

A work of legal scholarship, not legal advice.