The integration of artificial intelligence into on a regular basis life has raised many doubts and disturbing questions on the long run of humanity. But in Anguilla, a small Caribbean island east of Puerto Rico, the substitute intelligence boom has made the country’s fortune.
The UK territory charges a fee for any registration of web addresses ending with ‘.ai’, which is the domain name assigned to the island, e.g. ‘.fr’ for France and ‘.jp’ for Japan. With corporations looking for web addresses to enable communication on the forefront of the substitute intelligence boom – akin to Elon Musk’s X.ai site for his artificial intelligence company – Anguilla has recently received an enormous influx of domain name applications.
For each domain registration, the Anguilla government receives between $140 and hundreds of dollars from website names auctioned, in keeping with government records. Last 12 months, the Anguilla government earned about $32 million from these fees. This represented greater than 10 percent of gross domestic product in an area of nearly 16,000 people and 35 square miles.
“Some call it a windfall,” Anguilla Premier Ellis Webster said. “We just call it God smiling down on us.”
Webster said the federal government used the cash to offer free health care to residents aged 70 and older and committed millions of dollars to finish construction of a faculty and a job training center. The government also allocated funds to enhance its airport; doubled its budget for sports activities, events and facilities; and increased the budget for residents in search of treatment abroad, he said.
The island, which relies heavily on tourism, was hit hard by travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic and a devastating hurricane in 2017. Revenue from the .ai domain was the boost the country needed.
“We never thought it would have this much potential,” Webster said.
Anguilla’s control over the .ai extension dates back to the early days of the Internet, when nations and territories got their very own piece of cyberspace. Anguilla got the .ai extension, and its government, whose website is www.gov.ai., didn’t make much money off it until domains began bringing in millions of dollars. Officials aren’t sure how long the boon will last, but they predicted 2024 would see similar domain name revenues as last 12 months.
This is not the primary bonanza that makes a giant difference for the grateful domain owner. Tuvalu, a string of islands northeast of Australia, sold the rights to its “.tv” extension to a Canadian entrepreneur for $50 million and used the cash to offer electricity to the outer islands, create scholarships and finance the strategy of joining the United Nations.
In turn, the South Pacific island of Niue gave an American businessman the rights to the “.nu” suffix within the Nineteen Nineties in exchange for connecting him to the Internet. The island later claimed it had been scammed out of cash obtained from selling the domain name to hundreds of Scandinavians who were attracted by the suffix “nu”, which suggests “now” in Swedish, Danish and Dutch.
However, Anguilla realized early on that it couldn’t let the windfall jackpot get out of hand.
“It’s just luck for us” Mr. Webster said.
Brian Hoerst reporting contributed.
