Balancing innovation, regulation, and ethics in AI is the new Asian consensus

THE final session of the 11th Annual Daily FT-CICRA Cyber Security Summit 2025 concluded on a forward-looking note, exploring the intersection of AI governance, open innovation, and cybersecurity resilience.

- By Hiyal Biyagamage

From left: Meta South and Central Asia Public Policy Director Sarim Aziz, Rajah and Tann Cybersecurity CEO Wong Onn Chee, Nestle Lanka Legal and Regulatory Affairs Asst. Director and Company Secretary Keerthi Pathiraja, General Counsel, Data Protection Officer and PDPA Drafting Committee Member Trinesh Fernando and Moderator CICRA Holdings Group Director and CEO Boshan Dayaratne

Delivering the keynote under the session theme of “AI Governance Models and Frameworks: What is Best for Asia?,” Meta Director of Public Policy for South and Central Asia Sarim Aziz, urged governments, regulators, and enterprises across the region to embrace open-source collaboration and transparent governance as the foundation for responsible AI adoption.

Aziz began by tempering global hype around artificial intelligence, noting that current systems still lack true reasoning ability. Models like LLaMA, GPT, and Claude, he said, remain pattern predictors rather than cognitive thinkers; a technological checkpoint rather than a limitation. He attributed the rapid acceleration of AI progress to hardware breakthroughs, explaining that GPU performance is now evolving fifteen times faster than predicted, dramatically reducing the cost of training and deploying models. This, he argued, is creating a new window of opportunity for smaller nations like Sri Lanka, which can now access advanced compute capabilities once exclusive to global tech giants.

Setting out Meta’s open-source philosophy, Aziz described how innovation scales faster when knowledge is shared. He traced this ethos to Meta’s Fundamental AI Research Lab (FAIR), which produced open frameworks like React, PyTorch, and the LLaMA series of models. “When AI is open, innovation doesn’t depend on where you live. It depends on your imagination and your computer,” he remarked.