When will AI come for Sri Lanka?

In terms of technology adoption, Sri Lanka usually lags behind its regional peers. While most commonly due to funding issues, the lack of initiative for users to engage with technology is another commonly cited problem. 

For example, in India after the Modi regime demonetised currency in 2016 in a bid to combat counterfeit currency and black money, all users were compulsorily to go digital. Therefore, everyone in India is in need of a digital wallet. 

The modern language model ChatGPT, created by OpenAI, is now well-known all over the world. Technology has taken the world by storm and has been embraced by both individuals and corporations. It uses cutting-edge machine learning algorithms to produce text that looks and reads like human beings. 

More than 100 million people use ChatGPT worldwide as a result of its viral success since its inception two months ago. The current trending topic is the new digital tool. Some people are interested in it, while others express worry that they may be displaced by AI sooner than they anticipate in the workforce.

ChatGPT is a chatty robot that can communicate with users. Additionally, it can create codes, write essays, and respond to inquiries. At least 95 different languages are supported. In 2020, the California-based company OpenAI unveiled GPT-3, a “big language” model of artificial intelligence that generates text by poring through trillions of words of training data and discovering how words and phrases related to one another. 

An improved version of GPT-3 called ChatGPT was created with the intention of conversing with users. According to experts, because it can infer answers from your inquiries and consider the logic behind them in deciding what to say, conversation with AI feels more human than with real people.

The value of creating a Sinhalese and Tamil version of ChatGPT as an AI language model is also being explored. The majority ethnic group in Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese, speak Sinhala as their first language. With more than 16 million native speakers, it is crucial to establish a model of the Sinhala language that can be used in university research as well as in the fight against the dissemination of false information.

89% of American students ages 18 and older who participated in a poll by an online course provider claimed they have used ChatGPT for homework. More than half admitted using it to compose essays, and 48% admitted using it to complete at-home assessments. Alexander Zhadan, a college student in Russia, sparked debate by utilising ChatGPT to write his graduation thesis, but he was nevertheless given permission to keep his degree. 

Students take delight in having a new tool that makes homework easier, but some workers in some areas are starting to worry that they could soon be replaced by software. The media, programming, education, and legal services industries are among those in danger.

A legal expert at Beihang University asserted that ChatGPT and other forms of artificial intelligence will be able to perform much of the tasks currently performed by attorneys and judges, such as searching through extensive case law for precedent references. It is a huge task that calls for the cooperation of specialists in natural language processing, machine learning, and deep learning to construct a Sinhala language model utilising ChatGPT. 

Sri Lankan universities and software specialists have the ability to make substantial contributions to the project and aid in its success. They can develop a Sinhala ChatGPT model that is ideally suited to the needs of the Sri Lankan populace and can assist in maximising the potential of the nation’s linguistic data by cooperating and utilising their already available resources.