After graduation, NJIT undergraduate Naketa “KET-A” Williams ’26 will join Jamaica’s efforts to develop the Caribbean’s first Sovereign Great Language Model.
For Naketa “KET-A” Williams ’26, artificial intelligence is not just about what systems like ChatGPT can do, but whose stories, languages, and values they carry.
The idea soon brought Williams to Jamaica as a Fulbright recipient, where she would join a national effort to advance culturally-based AI development.
Williams will spend the next year working with researchers from the Jamaica Artificial Intelligence Association (JAIA) and the University of the West Indies to develop IRIS (Indigenous, Responsible, Intelligent Systems), the Caribbean’s first sovereign large-scale language model.
In April, Williams learned she was among about 1,800 U.S. students selected for a Fulbright award for the 2026-2027 academic year. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program supports international research and cultural exchange.
She received the news at one of her favorite spots on campus.
“There’s a tree near WEC that I always go to and call it the ‘Wishing Tree,'” Williams said. “When I got the email from Fulbright, I actually hugged a tree. I was just overjoyed.”
For Williams, who has Jamaican roots, the project is both intellectual and personal.
“Everything starts with love for the motherland,” she said. “As the world changes, we want Jamaica to be in the best possible position.”
Williams, a cyberpsychology major, said his experience with many mainstream generative AI systems led him to ask bigger questions. What happens when the technologies that shape our daily lives are built on foundations that don’t fully represent the people who use them?
“I speak Jamaican Patois,” she said. “As you get used to it, your native language comes out. There were times when I used Patois in conversation, but I couldn’t really understand the nuances.”
“When AI systems are trained primarily on global datasets, they can miss the soul of culture,” Williams added. “It affects whether people recognize themselves in the answers.”
IRIS was launched in 2024 as part of Jamaica’s National AI Initiative. The system is built using Jamaican linguistic, cultural and historical resources and represents a growing movement towards locally governed or sovereign AI, rooted in cultural specificity and public trust.
Williams said the current AI landscape is largely shaped by big tech companies, and initiatives like IRIS offer an alternative model, one in which communities help define how intelligence systems are developed.
“Sovereign AI to me means building systems that understand people as they are,” Williams said. “It’s not just about language; it’s about values, context and lived experience.”
This collaborative aspect will be central to Williams’ future efforts. While the project’s engineers continue to refine the model, she plans to focus on the human side of development, studying how communities assess the cultural authenticity of a system and foster trust in its responses.
In collaboration with Gunjan Mansingh, professor of computer science at the University of the West Indies and advisor to JAIA, Williams will lead workshops and community sessions where participants will compare responses from IRIS with globally trained models such as Claude and ChatGPT.
Williams said the goal is to determine whether a system feels culturally legitimate to the people it is designed to serve, and that quality cannot be measured by benchmarking alone.
“The community is not just testing IRIS,” she said. “They are helping with its construction.”
Williams said the locally developed model allows community feedback to go directly to the development team, shaping how the system improves over time and strengthening its role in cultural preservation.
She points to Jamaica’s Maroon community as an example, noting that some of the island’s small languages are at risk of disappearing without sustained preservation, and she believes IRIS will help address this issue.
“Being able to incorporate that kind of knowledge into a system like IRIS means it doesn’t just disappear,” she said. “That can actually be taught and advanced.”
Williams believes that if successful, the project could help reshape the broader conversation around artificial intelligence, especially in regions where language and lived experience are often underrepresented in mainstream systems.
“We don’t want AI safety research to focus on narrow notions of who a ‘human’ is,” she says. “Everyone needs to see themselves reflected in the systems they use.”
“I want people to feel hopeful when they think about AI,” she added. “Cultural perspectives aren’t just something you study; they can be incorporated into technology.”
As she approaches graduation later this month, Williams hopes her journey at NJIT resonates with students who may not fit themselves into the traditional definition of academic success.
“You don’t have to be an honor roll student to be great,” Williams said. “All the resources are here at NJIT, so please take advantage of them.”
