What Al can do for Sri Lanka

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a household buzzword of late thanks to advancements in a range of Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and DeepSeek.

- By Kasun THILINA KaRTYAWASAM

However, AI was an academic and industrial pursuit for longer than that. Warren S. McCulloch and Walter Pitts wrote the first paper on artificial neural networks in 1943. The British mathematician Alan Turing created the most famous framework for artificial intelligence. Until recently, the main obstacle to achieving high-level artificial computation was hardware limitations. Data processing has advanced significantly with the gradual development of semiconductor computation power and the advancements in integrated circuits. Data aggregation accelerated with the development of the Cybernet. Since 2010, we have created more data than in all previous human history. This illustrates the extent of data generation. Therefore, modern-day AI advancement is not an accident; it is a direct result of development in industrial systems.

What AI Can and Can't Do

There is an ongoing public debate about AI and its effect on human labour, relationships, and life in general. Some people have developed extremely negative views of AI due to its depiction in popular culture. However, these negative views are based on a lack of technical knowledge about AI. The human mind and artificial industrial computation cannot be compared. AI and human consciousness are different and will never replace or be compared to each other. As a biological creature, human computation is based on extremely complex external stimuli. However, AI relies on artificial computation that is based on knowledge acquired in a linear fashion from the data provided. This depends on the model's computational capability and embedded design. Therefore, there is a wide gap between human and AI capabilities.