Jamaicans Are Only Using 20% Of What AI Can Do: Inside The StarApple AI x Anthropic Usage Study

TL;DR

• A joint StarApple Analytics and Anthropic study found content creation is the largest single category of AI use from Jamaica, at 25.2 percent of conversations against a 22.7 percent global average, with homework help the single most common task.
• Only about 13 percent of Caribbean adults aged 18 to 65 use generative AI at all, against a global adoption rate near 55 percent, per the Latin American Artificial Intelligence Index (ILIA).
• Adrian Dunkley, StarApple AI's founder, put a number on the shortfall: "We're probably only using about 20 per cent of what these AI models can actually do."
• PwC found AI-related jobs growing nearly eight times faster than the overall market, with a 62 percent wage premium attached to AI skills.
• Roughly half of Jamaica's AI conversations already involve real back-and-forth refinement rather than one-shot commands, which is the part of the data that says the ceiling is reachable.

Jamaicans open Claude to write a caption, finish a homework assignment, or patch a bug in a script, and then close the tab. That is the shape of AI use a joint study by StarApple Analytics and Anthropic found when it examined how conversations from Jamaica differ from the rest of the world: content creation leads at 25.2 percent against a 22.7 percent global average, education tasks run at 17.4 percent, nearly double the 9.3 percent recorded in the United States, and homework help is the single largest specific task recorded. Adrian Dunkley, who led the work, framed the gap between that pattern and the technology's actual range in one line: Jamaica is using roughly a fifth of what the models can do.

What The Study Measured

The findings, reported in the Jamaica Observer on 26 July 2026, came out of a collaboration between StarApple Analytics and Anthropic that categorized anonymized Claude conversations originating in Jamaica by task type, using the same conversation-topic methodology behind Anthropic's own Economic Index research, then compared the resulting shares against global and United States baselines. It is a usage census rather than a survey of opinions: nobody was asked what they think about AI, the data comes from what people actually typed.

That distinction matters for a region where AI coverage often runs ahead of AI use. A survey can capture enthusiasm. A conversation log captures behaviour, and behaviour is what StarApple Analytics builds business intelligence out of for a living.

Content, Homework, And Code: What Jamaicans Actually Ask For

The content creation number is the headline, and it is a genuinely strong one. Jamaican users lean into AI as a writing and copy tool ahead of the global rate, which tracks with a small, English-speaking, marketing-and-media-heavy economy where a caption, a proposal, or a client email needs to go out fast. Education runs even further ahead of the comparison point: 17.4 percent against 9.3 percent in the United States is not a small gap, it very nearly doubles it, and homework help sits at the top of the specific-task list. Software development at 13.5 percent, above the 11.5 percent global figure, says a real base of Jamaican developers has already folded AI into how they write code.

None of that is shallow use. It is, however, a narrow slice of what a model like Claude is built to do. Writing a caption and running a multi-step financial model both start with a text box, but only one of them touches revenue. The study's task breakdown is, in effect, a map of where Jamaica's AI habit currently stops.

Task-share data of this kind is what turns anecdote into an adoption strategy.

The Region Underneath The Jamaica Number

Zoom out from Jamaica and the picture gets harder. The Latin American Artificial Intelligence Index (ILIA), covering the wider region and reported through ECLAC-linked research, put Caribbean generative AI adoption at around 13 percent of adults aged 18 to 65, against a global rate close to 55 percent. Adoption among the region's micro, small and medium enterprises sits near 19 percent. Investment tells the same story from a different angle: the Caribbean draws roughly 1.12 percent of global AI investment while holding 6.6 percent of global GDP and 8.8 percent of world population, a mismatch that puts capital allocation, not enthusiasm, at the centre of the region's AI gap. Jamaica ranked 13th of 19 countries on the same index.

Put the two studies together and Jamaica looks like a bright spot inside a slow region: above-average engagement in the categories people have adopted, sitting inside a Caribbean-wide adoption rate a fraction of the global figure. Strong per-user behaviour on a small base is still a small base.

"We're probably only using about 20 per cent of what these AI models can actually do," Dunkley said of the findings.

Why Half The Conversations Are The Encouraging Part

One number in the study cuts against the narrow-use story, and it is the one worth sitting with longest: 50.5 percent of Jamaican conversations involve real collaborative, multi-stage work rather than a single automated instruction, and roughly a third show repeated idea refinement, a share the study places above the global comparison. That is not what shallow use looks like. Shallow use is one prompt, one answer, tab closed. Iterative use, going back to a model to sharpen an answer, push on a weak point, or ask a follow-up, is the behaviour that precedes deeper adoption, because it is the same habit a business analyst needs when a model is doing real analytical work rather than drafting a caption.

Read that way, the 20 percent ceiling is not a verdict on Jamaican curiosity. It is a task-selection problem. Jamaicans already refine and iterate with AI; they are mostly doing it on content, homework and code rather than on the workflows that would show up in a productivity report.

What The Skills Data Says Is At Stake

PwC's global labour research gives the gap a dollar figure, or close to one. Its analysis of more than one billion job advertisements across 27 countries and territories found AI-related roles growing nearly eight times faster than the overall job market, with entry-level positions in AI-exposed occupations up 35 percent since 2019 even as other entry-level roles shrank. Workers with AI skills carry a 62 percent wage premium globally, and companies most exposed to AI recorded labour productivity growth reaching 163 percent among the leading adopters, drawn from a survey of 1,217 senior executives across 25 sectors.

PwC Jamaica's Hugh Thompson and Jossett Francis Wint have made the local version of this point directly: the shift for Caribbean employers is toward combining AI literacy with judgement, communication and leadership, not toward replacing staff outright. A workforce that uses AI for captions and homework is not positioned to capture a wage premium built on AI-assisted analysis, modelling and decision support. The premium sits exactly where Jamaica's usage data is thinnest.

The Honest Limits Of This Picture

Two caveats belong here rather than in a footnote. The usage study measures Claude conversations, not every AI tool Jamaicans touch, so it understates total exposure to the extent people lean on other assistants for different tasks. And the ILIA regional figures are self-reported adoption, a different instrument from a conversation log, so the 13 percent and the 25.2 percent are not directly comparable, they describe different things measured different ways. What both agree on, from two independent methodologies, is the direction: engaged but narrow at the individual level, thin and unevenly funded at the regional level.

What This Means For Caribbean Businesses

The practical read for a Jamaican or wider Caribbean business is straightforward. Staff are already comfortable enough with AI to iterate on it, which is the harder habit to build. What is missing is the push from personal productivity use into the workflows a business actually runs on: financial models, customer service triage, reporting pipelines, forecasting. That push needs data infrastructure and governance behind it, not just a company-wide Claude licence. A business that measures where its own team sits on this same content-versus-workflow split before investing has a real baseline to work from, rather than a guess.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did the StarApple Analytics and Anthropic study find about how Jamaicans use AI?

Content creation and copywriting are the largest category of AI conversations from Jamaica, at 25.2 percent against a 22.7 percent global average. Educational and learning tasks rank second at 17.4 percent, well above the 9.3 percent recorded in the United States, and software development sits at 13.5 percent against an 11.5 percent global average. Homework help is the single largest specific task.

How does Jamaica's AI usage compare with the rest of the Caribbean?

Jamaica shows higher-than-average engagement in specific categories such as content creation and education, but it sits inside a region with low overall uptake. Jamaica ranked 13th of 19 countries on the Latin American Artificial Intelligence Index (ILIA), and regional adoption trails far behind the global rate.

What percentage of Caribbean adults actually use generative AI?

Around 13 percent of Caribbean adults aged 18 to 65 use generative AI in any form, against a global adoption rate of roughly 55 percent, per ILIA data reported through ECLAC-linked research. Adoption among micro, small and medium enterprises in the region sits at about 19 percent, and the Caribbean accounts for only 1.12 percent of global AI investment despite holding 6.6 percent of global GDP and 8.8 percent of world population.

Why does Adrian Dunkley say the region is only using 20 percent of what AI can do?

Dunkley, founder of StarApple AI and StarApple Analytics, said of the study's findings: "We're probably only using about 20 per cent of what these AI models can actually do." The usage data backs the claim: Jamaicans lean on AI for content, homework and coding help, tasks a chat window handles well, while heavier, multi-step business workflows remain largely untried.

Is AI actually changing the Jamaican job market?

PwC's analysis of more than one billion job advertisements across 27 countries and territories found that AI-related roles are growing nearly eight times faster than the overall job market, and entry-level positions in AI-exposed occupations have grown 35 percent since 2019 while other entry-level roles have declined. PwC Jamaica's Hugh Thompson and Jossett Francis Wint say the shift for local employers is toward role transformation, not blanket automation.

What is the wage premium for workers with AI skills?

PwC's global analysis found a 62 percent wage premium for workers with AI skills, and companies most exposed to AI recorded labour productivity growth as high as 163 percent among the leading adopters. The research drew on a survey of 1,217 senior executives across 25 sectors.

What should a Jamaican or Caribbean business do with these numbers?

Move past single-shot content and homework-style prompting into workflows the business actually runs on: reporting, customer service triage, financial modelling and pipeline work. StarApple Analytics helps Caribbean businesses baseline their current AI use and build the analytics and governance layer that turns individual AI habits into a measurable capability. Contact insights@starapple.ai.

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