AI Asia Summit 2018

The AI Asia Vision

Sri Lanka is known as the island nation that punches above its weight in many categories. We wish to add Data Science and AI to that list! The reason for doing this is increasingly apparent. Sri Lanka for the last two decades has relied on two main pillars for its IT/BPM export; that is Software Development and Finance & Accounting. This strategy has served us well as we grew 23% CAGR year on year for the last decade.

However, times are changing. As a middle-income country we need to shift gears and look at increasing the diversity of our export-based basket of goods while climbing up the value chain. It's time to introduce a new pillar, one that offers exponential gains, the third pillar of Data Science and AI.

We have an opportunity in the next few years to lay the solid foundations of being an important thought leader in the South Asian context. We need to focus on how Sri Lanka can leverage the transformative technology to ensure social and inclusive growth in line with the development philosophy of the government.

In addition, Sri Lanka should strive to replicate these solutions as exports in other similarly placed developing countries. This opportunity comes at the right time. When as a Nation we are shifting gears from providing labor arbitrage solutions to becoming a true value added knowledge provider for our partners and stakeholders. It is for us to seize this opportunity. The AI Asia summit will be a catalyst for this vision and raise awareness across industry, government, universities and private institutions. Apart from looking internally this year we will work with partner countries such as Norway and Australia to collaborate our vision. AI Asia will be Sri Lanka's premiere AI event hosted and organized by SLASSCOM to raise awareness and discuss issues around Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. The vision of this event will culminate with a release of an AI policy which will outline Sri Lanka's vision for the next five years.

It is with great pleasure that I wish to invite you to join on this exciting journey ahead of us.

Jeevan Gnanam

Chairman - SLASSCOM