A tiny Caribbean island receives a huge economic boost thanks to its internet address

The rise of artificial intelligence has benefited chatbot programmers, computer scientists and investors of Nvidia. But it is also giving an unusual economic boost to Anguilla, a tiny Caribbean island.

ChatGPT’s debut nearly two years ago heralded the arrival of the age of artificial intelligence and led many companies to rush to acquire website names ending with .ai.

And it turns out that that is the suffix of the internet addresses for the British territory of Anguillaone of hundreds of suffixes assigned in the 1990s to countries or territories based on their names. Although internet domains supposedly indicate that that portal is related to that region or language, it is not always a mandatory requirement.

Google, for example, uses google.ai to showcase its artificial intelligence services while Elon Musk uses x.ai as the portal for your Grok AI chatbot. Startups like search engine Perplexity have also acquired addresses with the .ai suffix, to which users are directed when searching for the .com version.

Anguilla’s revenue from Internet address registrations quadrupled last year to $32 million, thanks to emerging interest in artificial intelligence. The amount now comprises approximately 20% of all Anguilla government revenues. Before the rise of AI, the figure was 5%.

The government of Anguilla, which uses the portal with the suffix gov.aicharges a fee each time a .ai address is renewed. Identity Digital chief strategy officer Ram Mohan said the fee — $140 for two years — will not change. Anguilla also receives a payment every time a new internet address is registered and every time an address that has already expired is sold. Some addresses have sold for tens of thousands of dollars.

This directly benefits the economy of Anguilla, which has an area of just 35 square miles and a population of approximately 16,000 inhabitants. Graced with coral reefs, crystal clear waters and white sand beaches flanked by palm trees, the island is a popular destination among wealthy tourists. Even so, many residents are poor and tourism has been battered by the pandemic and before that, by a powerful hurricane.

Anguilla does not have its own AI industry although Prime Minister Ellis Webster hopes the island will one day be a hub for that technology. He noted that it was by sheer luck that Anguilla ended up in 1995 with .ia as its internet address instead of nearby Antigua, even though both have those letters in their name.

Webster said the money relieves some pressure on public finances and helps fund key projects, but cautioned that “we can’t rely on that alone.”

“We can’t predict how long this will last,” Webster said in an interview with the AP. “So I don’t want our economy and our country and all of our programs to be based solely on this, and then suddenly another fad comes in a year or two, and we have to cut spending and eliminate programs.”

To help manage the explosive increase in Internet address registration requests, Anguilla said Tuesday it would sign an agreement with a US-based company, Identity Digital.who is an expert in that area. The agreement, officials said, will provide more revenue to the government while improving the resilience and security of Internet addresses.

Identity Digital, which also manages the .au suffix assigned to Australia, estimates that by early next year it will have all .ai addresses in its systems, Mohan said in an interview.

A local software entrepreneur had previously helped Anguilla build its address registration system.

There are currently more than 533,000 .ai web domains, a more than 10-fold increase over the number registered in 2018. The International Monetary Fund said in a report in May that the profits will help Angula diversify its economy “making it more resilient to external shocks.”

Webster believes revenue could rise even further, potentially doubling this year from last year’s $32 million.

He stated that the money will finance the expansion of the airport, provide free medical services to the elderly and allow the construction of a vocational center at the Anguilla secondary school to be completed.

The money will also provide “budgetary support” for other projects the government is considering, such as a national development fund it could use in case of hurricanes. The island in those cases depends on help from its administrative power, Great Britain, which comes with conditions, Webster said.

Mohan said that working with Digital Identity It will also protect the island from cybercriminals who are trying to take advantage of the frenzy around artificial intelligence.

He cited the example of Tokelau, an island in the Pacific Ocean whose .tk addresses notoriously became associated with spam and phishing after the island outsourced its internet logging services.

“We worry about malicious actors who could use any address, put the suffix .aiand make believe that they are bigger or better than they really are,” said Mohan, adding that the company will rush to eliminate shady sites.

Another benefit is that websites with the .ai suffix will no longer have to be connected to the Anguilla government’s digital infrastructure through the island’s only internet cable, which would have left them vulnerable to digital jams or physical disturbances.

They will now use the company’s servers that are distributed globally, which means they will be able to access them faster because they will be closer to the users.

“It will go from milliseconds to microseconds,” Mohan said.