Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka said the organization called the Association of Information Technology Professionals has completely misrepresented the UNF candidate Sajith Premadasa's message on Artificial Intelligence

"The Megamind organizing team has replied to the message from the secretary of the Association of Information Technology Professionals, Lasantha Wickramasinghe showing that he has completely misinterpreted the message from the UNF candidate," Ranawaka said in a statement.

He also added, "The objective of the presentation was to demonstrate the concept of scientific governance to the public. In scientific governance, following aspects are promoted,

o Collection and analysis of data related to important aspects of the government needing policy and implementation interventions o Dashboards showing the row data and processed information for decision making o Use of AI for predicting the consequences after implementing policy decisions

Demonstration used at Megamind was to illustrate the above aspects in Consumer affairs, economic growth in tourism and wild life management. These dashboards were created using a very simple template available online.

Data related in above areas were displayed as a dashboard in our demonstration and candidate had few questions to the subject matter experts in each area. They helped the candidate to understand the data in the dashboard in respect to the decisions to be made. There no demonstration on driving a vehicle without a driver, diagnosing a patient and suggesting the treatments by a robot. This is completely incorrect reporting.

As a policy, future governments should use these concepts in management. This is a multi-year, sizable project, needing the support of many organizations and professionals. We appeal all IT professionals in the country to come together without any political alignment to create the technology driven management.

Professionals carrying narrow political agenda have hampered the implementation of scientific management policy and technology driven management in the country so far. Need of the hour is to align with the policy and support implementation rather arguing and criticizing minor details."