The artificial intelligence boom is fueled by chatbot makers, computer scientists, and NVIDIA investors. It also provides an unusual windfall for the small Caribbean island of Anguilla.
ChatGPT debut Almost two years ago, the age of AI ushered in a digital gold rush as companies bought up websites ending in .ai and competed for their rights.
That’s where Anguilla comes in. The British territory was assigned control of .ai internet addresses in the 1990s. It was one of hundreds of obscure top-level domains Assigned to individual countries and regions Based on their names. A domain is supposed to indicate that a website has a link to a particular region or language, but is not required.
Google uses google.ai to showcase its artificial intelligence services, while Elon Musk uses x.ai as the homepage for his Grok AI chatbot. Startups like AI search engine Perplexity are also acquiring .ai web addresses and redirecting users from the .com version.
Anguilla’s revenue from web domain registration fees quadrupled last year. $32 millionfueled by growing interest in AI. This revenue currently accounts for approximately 20% of Anguilla’s government’s total revenue. Before the AI boom, it hovered around 5%.
The Government of Anguilla, which uses the gov.ai home page, collects a fee each time the .ai web address is updated. The territory on Tuesday struck a deal with a U.S. company to manage the domains after exploding demand, but fees are not expected to change. Rewards are also paid when new addresses are registered and expired addresses are sold. On some sites, Tens of thousands were caught of dollars.
This funding will directly boost the economy of Anguilla, which is just 91 square kilometers and has a population of about 16,000 people. Blessed with coral reefs, crystal clear waters and white sandy beaches surrounded by palm trees, this island is a paradise for ultra-wealthy tourists. Still, many residents are disadvantaged, and tourism has been hit hard by the pandemic and even before it. Hurricane.
Although Anguilla does not have its own AI industry, Prime Minister Ellis Webster hopes the country will one day become a technology hub. He said it was fortunate that the .ai domain was assigned to Anguilla in 1995 rather than nearby Antigua. That’s because both places had those letters in their names.
Mr Webster said the funding would take pressure off government finances and help fund major projects, but warned “we cannot rely on it alone”.
“We cannot predict how long this situation will last,” Webster said in an interview with The Associated Press. “So I don’t want to build our economy, our country, and all of our programs based on this. And then all of a sudden in the next year or two there’s a new fad, and then we remove the program. We will have to make significant spending cuts.”
In response to the explosive growth in domain registrations, Anguilla announced Tuesday it has entered into an agreement with Identity Digital, a U.S.-based domain management company, to help manage the effort. They said the deal would mean increased revenue for the government while improving the resiliency and security of web addresses.
Identity Digital, which also manages Australia’s .au domains, plans to migrate all .ai domain services to its own systems by early next year, Ram Mohan, Identity Digital’s chief strategy officer, said in an interview. Ta.
A local software entrepreneur had helped launch Anguilla’s registry system decades ago.
There are currently more than 533,000 .ai web domains, an increase of more than 10x since 2018. The International Monetary Fund says: May report The proceeds will help diversify the economy, “thereby making it more resilient to external shocks,” he said.
Webster expects domain-related revenue to increase further, potentially doubling this year from last year’s $32 million.
He said the money would go toward expanding the airport, providing free medical care for the elderly and completing a vocational and technical training center for Anguilla’s high schools.
The proceeds will also provide “budgetary support” for other projects the government is eyeing, such as a national development fund that can be used immediately for hurricane recovery efforts. Webster said the island usually has strings attached to aid from the British government.
Mohan said that working with Identity Digital will also protect against cybercriminals looking to capitalize on the hype surrounding artificial intelligence.
He cited the example of the Pacific island of Tokelau, whose .tk addresses became notorious for their association with spam and phishing after outsourcing its registry services.
“We’re worried that someone with bad intentions will steal something and put a .ai on it and make it look like it’s much bigger or much better than it really is,” Mohan said. said, adding that the company’s technology removes questionable sites immediately.
Another benefit is that .AI websites no longer need to connect to the government’s digital infrastructure via a single internet cable to the island, making them vulnerable to digital bottlenecks and physical disruptions. .
From now on, you’ll be using the company’s servers that are distributed around the world, which means the servers will be closer to you and you’ll be able to access them faster.
“It goes from milliseconds to microseconds,” Mohan said.
