Dhammika wants private sector to take lead role in AI adoption

Billionaire businessman and corporate leader Dhammika Perera says Sri Lanka’s private sector must take the lead in adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive future economic growth as AI enables logical decision making. 

“The government expenditure is only 19 percent of the GDP, the remaining 81 percent is by the private sector. Unless the private sector takes the initiative to improve its productivity, the GDP won’t grow. Moreover, in future, corporates won’t be able to earn profits unless they cut down on wastage,” Perera asserted.

He was speaking at a forum organised by the Computer Society of Sri Lanka (CSSL) at Nelum Pokuna last Thursday. 

He advised the government to focus on policy making to adopt AI for education, healthcare, public transport as well as for law enforcement agencies such as Sri Lanka Police to reduce wastage and ensure efficient distribution of resources targeting 
future demand.   

Perera illustrating several examples said Sri Lankans tend to make decisions based on emotions rather than logic, which could be corrected with the adoption of AI.
“There’s a roundabout in front of Nelum Pokuna Theatre, which is also equipped with traffic lights. Have you observed anywhere in the world a roundabout equipped with traffic lights? Our people don’t use human intelligence. If there are traffic lights, there is no need for a roundabout. How many roundabouts are there in Colombo equipped with traffic lights? ,” he questioned. 

He noted that once the roundabouts are taken away in Colombo, the traffic congestions will ease off while reducing environmental 
pollutions drastically. 

“When you remove these, the traffic congestions will go down. Due to these roundabouts, every vehicle has to drive an additional 10 metres, hence when you remove the roundabout, the pollution will also go down by 10 percent,” he stressed.

Perera insisted that as emotions have overridden intelligence, people tend to take rash decisions which finally produce adverse consequences.  

“If there was AI, these things wouldn’t happen and it would be much easier to develop the country,” he emphasised. 

He also stressed that it’s the right time for Sri Lanka to adopt AI. Perera predicted that there will be several technological breakthroughs in the coming decades,  and insisted that Sri Lanka needs to stay ready for these technological advancements.

“I cannot help myself predicting future technologies as I have been associating with data scientists on AI over past one and half years. I can predict that 6G will come in 2030 and 7G will come in 2040.

“Some may wonder what will happen when 6G comes in 2030. I predict that there won’t be mobile towers and the whole island would get 6G converge with one satellite. In 2040, 7G coverage will come from space enabling roaming across the world,” he said.

Although some industries might altogether disappear with adoption of AI, Perera assured that as productivity will increase consumption levels, more job opportunities will arise as it has been the case in the past. 

“Don’t think you will lose jobs because of AI. People had the same fear when steam engine, electricity and IT were adopted,” he said.  

Perera has already introduced AI to several of his companies including Singer, DP Academy, Halyey’s Agriculture, Hayleys Advantis, LB Finance, Lanka Tiles and Rocell.

With the introduction of AI-based smart sale forecasting and route optimisation, intelligence field service management system and business intelligence and analytics to Singer, he noted that sales have risen in Singer while reducing wasteful spending. 

Singer is also planning to adopt AI to take marketing and promotional decisions on media platforms in six months where Singer has a budget of over Rs.1 billion. 

Perea noted that he has already implemented 10 AI-based projects in the companies under him while 40 more projects are in the pipeline. (NF)