For Katie Inder, founder of Concise and programme manager of AI Sprint, the drive to help Guernsey embrace artificial intelligence is about much more than adopting the latest technology. It is about skills, opportunity and ensuring the island is ready for the jobs and businesses of the future.
With a professional background in data, Katie has long been interested in technology. But her enthusiasm for developing Guernsey’s digital economy also comes from personal experience.
When she returned to the island after Covid, she found it difficult to secure a role, not due to her skills but because of the lack of data jobs available locally. It highlighted for her the opportunity Guernsey has to broaden its economy and create careers in areas beyond its traditional strengths.
‘I think as an island we’ve got such an opportunity to diversify our industry into other sectors,’ she said. That could encompass digital finance as well as data, AI and entrepreneurship.
For Katie, increasing digital and AI capability across Guernsey’s workforce is an important part of creating those opportunities.
‘I think that raising the level of the island, the workforce in digital and AI, will help create more opportunities for people and businesses.’
That ambition is reflected in the breadth of AI Sprint.
The programme has been designed to accommodate people with vastly different levels of experience, from those who have never opened an AI tool and may still be uncertain about the technology to people interested in using AI for coding or applying it within sectors including law, finance and private wealth, construction and project management.
What links those audiences, Katie believes, is the opportunity to share knowledge and generate new ideas.
She hopes the programme will also encourage ‘a shared optimism about the future of Guernsey’ and what could be achieved if the island actively embraces the technology.
The question, she suggests, is how much more Guernsey could accomplish by combining AI with the people and resources it already has.
Katie herself is contributing to several of the sessions.
Among them is From Tools to Teammates, a webinar exploring the development from the chat and generative AI with which many people are now familiar towards agentic AI.
‘Chat is how you would probably typically think of AI these days and how you use it, whereas agentic is really where businesses, particularly, are going to see the benefit,’ she said.
Wearing another of her hats through Innovate Guernsey, she is also involved with events designed to demonstrate how practical and accessible AI can be.
Life Hacks, hosted at the library, is aimed squarely at everyday users. Participants can learn how to use AI for familiar tasks such as organising their week, planning meals or preparing for a holiday.
At the other end of the spectrum is AI for Good, run in collaboration with the Association of Guernsey Charities. Local charities have been invited to submit challenges that they do not necessarily have the resources or specialist skills to address themselves, particularly administration-heavy processes. Developers and local technology specialists will then be matched with them to try to tackle those challenges in a day.
While AI Sprint is intended to demonstrate what is possible, Katie is equally clear that enthusiasm has to be balanced with responsible use.
‘It’s easy to get excited by the art of the possible and what it can do. But it is important to be balanced in your approach,’ she said.
Concerns about regulation, security, data protection and environmental factors can become a barrier to businesses adopting AI, meaning the programme also addresses those areas directly.
Sessions include guidance from the ODPA, including an event aimed specifically at SMEs and another covering data protection impact assessments for AI. Other discussions will examine how businesses can balance risk and innovation, with cybersecurity expertise included within the programme.
The aim is not to discourage adoption but to give businesses the confidence to proceed in a measured way.
‘How can businesses implement AI in a measured way, still get the benefits from it, but still feel secure and educate their staff on how to use it properly?’ Katie said.
The emphasis throughout AI Sprint is deliberately practical.
For all the attention now surrounding artificial intelligence, Katie has found that many people know it can do ‘lots of stuff’ but struggle with the next question: what can it actually do for their organisation, and where do they start?
Show-and-tell style sessions and examples from local businesses are intended to bridge that gap by making AI tangible and relatable rather than theoretical.
And, importantly, its potential goes well beyond using a chatbot to polish the wording of an email.
The real opportunity is to identify applications that improve productivity, streamline processes and solve genuine business problems.
Katie hopes that practical emphasis will become the legacy of the programme.
Six months after AI Sprint, success for her would mean hearing from a business that attended a session, saw how another organisation had used AI to streamline a process such as client onboarding or internal reporting and then returned to its own workplace to start developing and testing something similar.
‘I want to see businesses getting together and sharing their success stories,’ she said. AI Sprint may also provide a way of measuring how Guernsey’s relationship with the technology develops.
Questions included during registration are helping to establish a baseline of how AI is currently being used and where opportunities or knowledge gaps exist. That information could help shape future initiatives, while another survey in six or 12 months could demonstrate how far the island has progressed.
Ultimately, Katie sees the project as a community effort rather than a commercial exercise.
‘We made sure that every event isn’t selling. It is actually just genuinely the Guernsey community coming together to try and raise the level of AI, get us future-ready.’
With support extending from local organisations to global technology businesses including Microsoft and AWS, the ambition is deliberately broad.
Whether someone represents a business, works in government or simply wants to understand how AI could help in everyday life, Katie believes the opportunity is there to engage, experiment and learn.
The technology may be moving quickly, but her message is reassuringly straightforward: start somewhere, make it practical and keep learning.
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