A timely eye-opener to the environmental, social and economic costs of AI

Sri Lanka is positioning itself as an emerging hub for artificial intelligence, promising investors that the island is ready to host large data centres, cloud providers and digital infrastructure on a scale never attempted before.

- By IrHam Nizam

Government statements present AI as a clean, limitless opportunity—an industry that will accelerate GDP growth, attract foreign capital and turn the country into a regional innovation centre.

But at Thursday’s Nations Trust Bank — WNPS Monthly Lecture at the BMICH, former Acting Chief Justice Shiranee Tilakawardane offered a blunt reality check, warning that the nation is entering this race “without calculating the environmental, social or economic costs of what we are inviting in.”

And in the world of AI, she stressed, these costs are not abstract. “AI is not some weightless miracle technology. It is enormously resource-intensive, and those impacts are already shaping global investment decisions,” she said.