Global economic downturn spares none and its latest victim is the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Foundation. The OLPC is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachussetts and the organisation’s laudable aim is to provide free “basic” laptop computers to deprived children in poor countries. However, as MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, the OLPC’s founder admits, “We’re no longer the newest story in town and the economic downturn has hit us, just like it’s hit everybody else”. Read more.
Artificial intelligence (AI) offers significant potential to enhance public services and drive innovation within Sri Lanka’s public sector. At the AI Asia Summit 2024 in Colombo, Merl Chandana, Research Manager and head of the Data, Algorithms, and Policy (DAP) team at LIRNEasia, shared insights on how the government can harness AI effectively and responsibly.
In the world of technology, programming errors—whether stemming from minor oversights or fundamental misunderstandings—can have catastrophic consequences. From the tragic failure of spacecraft missions to the collapse of critical infrastructures, history is filled with examples where a simple bug or miscalculation triggered massive disasters.
This article was carried in the Daily Mirror on 17 October 2024 on International Eradication of Poverty Day Poverty in Sri Lanka has increased significantly with the onset of COVID-19 and the macroeconomic crisis. LIRNEasia’s national survey in 2023 highlighted that 4 million people fell into poverty between 2019 and 2023, causing 7 million individuals — or 31% of the population — to live in poverty at the time.
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