The integration of artificial intelligence into everyday life has raised doubts and troubling questions for many about humanity’s path forward. But in Anguilla, a small Caribbean island east of Puerto Rico, the artificial intelligence boom has made the country a fortune.
The British territory collects a fee from each registration for Internet addresses ending in “.ai”, which happens to be the domain name assigned to the island, such as “.fr” for France and “.jp” for Japan . With companies wanting communicating web addresses at the forefront of the artificial intelligence boom – such as Elon Musk’s X.ai website for his artificial intelligence company – Anguilla has recently received a huge influx of domain name requests.
For each domain registration, the Anguilla government gets between $140 and thousands of dollars from auctioned website names, according to government figures. Last year, the Anguilla government made about $32 million from these fees. This amounted to more than 10 percent of the gross domestic product for the area of ​​nearly 16,000 people and 35 square miles.
“Some people are calling it a windfall,” said Anguilla’s prime minister, Alice Webster. “We just say that God is smiling on us.”
Mr Webster said the government had used the money to provide free health care to citizens aged 70 and over, and had committed millions of dollars to complete the construction of a school and a vocational training centre. The government has also allocated funds to improve its airport. doubled its budget for sports activities, events and facilities; and increased the budget for citizens seeking medical treatment abroad, he said.
The island, which relies heavily on tourism, had been hit hard by pandemic travel restrictions and a devastating typhoon in 2017. Revenue from the .ai domain was the boost the country needed.
“We never thought it would have this potential,” Mr Webster said.
Anguilla’s control of .ai dates back to the early days of the internet, when nations and territories were given their piece of cyberspace. Anguilla got .ai and its government, whose website is www.gov.ai., didn’t do much of it until the domain names started making millions. Officials are unsure how long the giveaway will last, but they predicted 2024 would bring in revenue similar to last year from domain names.
It’s not the first bonus that makes a big difference to a grateful domain owner. Tuvalu, a string of islands northeast of Australia, sold the rights to its suffix, “.tv,” to a Canadian businessman for $50 million and used the money to power the outer islands, create scholarships and finance the process of joining the United Nations.
The South Pacific island of Niue, on the other hand, gave an American businessman the rights to its “.nu” suffix in the 1990s in exchange for its Internet connection. The island later claimed it had been defrauded of cash from selling the domain name to thousands of Scandinavians attracted by the suffix “nu”, which means “now” in Swedish, Danish and Dutch.
But Anguilla realized early enough that it couldn’t let this unexpected jackpot slip away.
“It’s just lucky for us», said Mr. Webster.
Brian Hurst contributed to the report.
