New Delhi, Feb 23 The only way for Sri Lanka to get into the AI race is to jump onto the bandwagon of a fast mover. Since it is unlikely that Sri Lanka can do so with the two leaders in the AI race -- the US and China -- the choice available is its neighbour to the north, India, the rising star. India has a high strategic edge with AI on many counts, according to an article in the Colombo Telegraph.
“India is moving fast in AI development and, most likely, will become part of a three-member oligopoly along with the US and China that will dominate the world. In this game, Sri Lanka has no choice but to jump onto the Indian bandwagon to harness the best results for its citizens,” states the article written by Dr WA Wijewardena.
Sri Lanka’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake highlighted at the AI Summit here last week that countries lagging in the AI race may face even greater vulnerabilities because the new trend will threaten shared aspirations for inclusive, equitable, and sustainable development -- the common goals of the world’s nations today.
He also noted that Sri Lanka, like many other emerging economies, is yet to develop its AI infrastructure to harness its full potential as a driver of the economy. What is needed, according to him, is decisive action by these nations to follow a principled, confident, and forward-looking strategy.
The article states that Sri Lanka is specifically vulnerable because it does not have the necessary infrastructure in place to join the AI race. In this game, India which is now branded as a ‘rising star’ is placed third globally in AI competitiveness and vibrancy by Stanford University’s AI Index 2025, while it is ranked midway in the IMF’s AI Preparedness Index and Oxford University’s Government AI Readiness Index for 2025 . But its ability to effectively challenge the two rising leaders is questionable.
The article points out that joining that India provides a way out for Sri Lanka. Demography-wise, India has a young population of about a two-thirds falling under 35 years. That is a high potential humanware stock. With respect to digital infrastructure, it has an enviable recent catchup.
Its cloud storage capacity is about 100 petabytes or PBs and numerous data centres are equipped with more than 38,000 Graphics Processing Units or GPUs. This is a massive advancement since a single petabyte can store about 500 billion pages of standard text or over 200,000 high-definition movies. GPUs, originally designed for graphics, are today used for heavy computation, video editing, and machine learning.
Due to their ability to handle intensive data tasks, GPUs are critical for training large AI models. On top of these, India is now entrepreneurship-driven with the proliferation of about 200,000 startups. It also has a large 5G subscriber base of more than 400 million users, the article states.
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