SLASSCOM AI Asia Summit 2018 to feature world-renowned speakers on Data Science, Machine Learning
The Sri Lanka Association for Software and Services Companies (SLASSCOM) is pleased to announce the first-ever SLASSCOM AI Asia Summit to be hosted at The Kingsbury, on November 7, 2018, from 8:30a.m. to 5:30p.m..
This is Sri Lanka’s first conference dedicated to the topics of Data Science and Machine Learning with many acclaimed international and local speakers addressing the latest developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) across application, research and adoption.
Key international speakers include DHL Data Analytics Director Timothy Kooi, Mediatek Technology Senior Director Dr. Yasantha Rajakarunanayake, Simcentric Technologies Chief Executive Officer Dr. Adam Easton, Boutique Data Consultancy Founder and Principal Dr. James Shanahan, Applied Machine Learning Scientist Dr. Rukshan Batuwita and Google Deepmind Senior Research Scientist Dr. Chrisantha Fernando among others.
SLASSCOM Chairman Jeevan Gnanam, in his vision for AI Asia, identified Sri Lanka as the island nation that punches above its weight in many categories and the need to add Data Science and AI to that list.
He said: “Sri Lanka for the last two decades has relied on two main pillars for its IT/BPM export; that is Software Development and Finance and Accounting. This strategy has served us well as we grew 23 percent CAGR year on year for the last decade. However, times are changing. As a middleincome 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 as this provides Sri Lanka with the opportunity in the next few years to lay the solid foundations of being an important thought leader in the South Asian context.”
Gnanam added that Sri Lanka should strive to replicate these solutions as exports to other similarly placed developing countries. This provides Sri Lanka with the opportunity once again to move beyond providing labour arbitrage solutions to becoming a true, value-added knowledge provider for clients and stakeholders.
The AI Asia summit will be a catalyst for this vision and raise awareness across industry, government, universities and private institutions of the opportunity ahead and what must be done now, in order to make this a reality. This event will culminate with the release of a Proposed AI Policy which will outline Sri Lanka’s vision for the next five years.
“I’m elated to find so many Sri Lankans who are leading the research and development efforts of corporates and technology companies in the data science, analytics and machine learning space,” Jeevan commented.
SLASSCOM is also pleased to host Dr. Yasantha Rajakarunanayake at AI Asia 2018 to deliver a keynote on ‘The Inspirational Applications of AI for Sri Lanka’. Yasantha was recently highlighted by Jeff Bezos for his memorable accomplishments at Princeton. He has 94 patents filed in the US, a great testament of the nation’s talent and potential. His work and research interests include developing Machine Learning/ai algorithms and Computer Vision systems for energy constrained embedded devices and innovative applications and AI algorithms for human presence, motion and gesture detection with mmwave radar systems.