I spend close to a hundred dollars a month on AI tools: ChatGPT, Claude, various coding assistants and other tools. I’ve been doing this for three years, well before it was trendy, because AI has become as essential to my work as coffee and complaining when the Wi-Fi drops.
I live on a tiny island where AI is both my daily tool and our national windfall, which gives the whole thing an odd kind of symmetry. Our island of 15,000 people owns the .ai country-code domain — an early internet quirk from the 90s, when every nation was assigned two letters, and ours just happened to get the one the tech world wants most right now. In 2024, we earned $39 million from companies desperate for .ai websites, nearly a quarter of our government’s revenue. That money has helped fund an airport expansion, built sports facilities and it even eliminated residential property taxes.
Here’s the paradox: we own one of the internet’s hottest digital assets, earning millions from the AI boom while remaining one of the most intentionally human-centred societies you’ll ever find.
THE BEAUTIFUL CONTRADICTION
Many successful local businesses still run on handshakes, paper ledgers and Excel documents. In my own work, I might build an online payment system, only for locals to still walk in to handle business face to face. Look, I get it. I really do. But it’s exasperating, because it took me hours to build the damn thing, and then they don’t even use it. Aya lawd!
That frustration taught me what people actually value. Our visitors feel the same way. They treasure conversations that linger over dinner, recommendations from someone who knows their taste and the unhurried pace of genuine connection. It’s the warmth, the stories and the personal attention that keep people coming back year after year.
THE THIRD WAY FORWARD
While the world debates whether AI makes us more or less human, Anguilla can show something different — not AI replacing human interaction, but AI removing the friction that prevents it.
In my own work, AI handles the tedious parts — organising information, drafting routine responses, catching errors and processing data. Creativity is my superpower, but tedium is my kryptonite. What AI creates is oxygen: breathing room to focus on work that requires human insight and imagination.
Imagine applying the same principle to our hospitality businesses. AI can handle schedul – ing logistics, inventory management, routine inquiries and data entry — not to reduce staff, but to free them for what matters: reading a guest’s mood, sharing the story behind today’s catch, handling the unexpected with grace and offering the kind of recommendation only a local would know.
The technology doesn’t earn its place by replacing those human moments; it does it by creating space for more of them.
PROGRESS, ANGUILLIAN STYLE
Here, progress might mean amplifying what already works rather than replacing it. The .ai revenue doesn’t have to change our cultural DNA. It can fund infrastructure while we stay intentional about how technology serves us — rather than the other way around.
I see this paradox not as a contradiction, but as an opportunity. We’ve accidentally become the symbolic home of artificial intelligence. What if we use this position to show that the future of technology doesn’t have to be less human? That when implemented thoughtfully, it can create more room for the connections, stories and authentic moments that have always defined us?
It would be the most Anguillian thing ever: taking a global technology revolution and quietly using it to become more ourselves. Maybe progress, for us, isn’t about racing ahead. It’s about remembering what’s worth slowing down for.
Full disclosure: Yes, this article was written with the help of AI. I have zero shame in admitting that. It helped me get the words out faster, because I’d have taken forever to write it from scratch. Which is probably why this is my first piece in TRUE Anguilla after eleven years!
