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“The AI Advantage: How Vietnam is Leveraging its Human Resource”

19 August, 2024

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Vietnam attracted over $1 billion in investment into tech startups in 2023. (Photo: Vietnam+)

“Vietnam has many advantages in developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) thanks to its market, human resources, and startup ecosystem.”

This was the assessment of international experts at the GenAI Summit 24 on artificial intelligence. The event was sponsored by the Ministry of Planning and Investment and co-organized by the New Turing Institute (NTI) and Rethink Healthcare Foundation (RHF), in collaboration with the National Innovation Center (NIC) and Fulbright University Vietnam on August 18.

Vietnam is in a unique position to lead AI innovation in the region and beyond.

At the summit, Mr. Nguyen Duc Toan, Country Director of Google Cloud, stated that Vietnam is in a unique position to lead AI innovation in Southeast Asia. The Vietnamese market is receiving tremendous support from the government and domestic corporations (such as Viettel, Vingroup, etc.) to ride the wave of AI.

Over time, the government has introduced numerous policies to encourage startups and investment in technology. This has created a conducive environment for AI businesses to thrive and compete in the international market. In terms of international cooperation, Google is investing heavily in training the future workforce in Vietnam.

They have committed to providing 40,000 “Google Career Certificates” scholarships and training 200 Vietnamese startups in AI-related fields through the Google AI Startups Masterclass program. This contributes to building a high-quality workforce and creating significant opportunities for AI startups.

According to Dr. Luong Minh Thang, a senior researcher and executive at Google DeepMind and co-founder of the New Turing Institute, Vietnamese students have a strong passion for mathematics, which puts them in a good position to excel in this new era.

GenAI Summit 24 on artificial intelligence, August 18.

The speakers at the event shared the view that Vietnam has a strong tradition of education, particularly in mathematics and science, producing a high-quality workforce for the AI industry. In fact, Vietnamese students consistently achieve impressive results in international mathematics competitions, demonstrating their logical thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for AI development.

A report from the Ministry of Planning and Investment revealed that Vietnam attracted over $1 billion in investment into tech startups in 2023. The rapid growth of this startup ecosystem is on par with Singapore and Malaysia. However, experts also pointed out challenges in building AI infrastructure and attracting talent, especially in mathematics and science.

Ms. Wendy Uyen Nguyen, Co-founder and President of Rethink Healthcare Foundation, emphasized the urgency of AI training and education in Vietnam, particularly in healthcare, where AI can make a significant impact. Specifically, GenAI can improve the healthcare sector, allowing doctors to focus on their core expertise.

“AI has tremendous potential to revolutionize healthcare, especially in drug development and medical translation. Additionally, AI can reduce costs, accelerate research, and improve patient outcomes, bringing more treatment opportunities to rural areas,” Ms. Wendy stressed.

In the field of mathematics, Dr. Luong Minh Thang highlighted the shift from the “simulation” era to the “discovery” era in AI, where mathematical reasoning plays a pivotal role. He mentioned that AI has solved “superhuman” problems, such as AlphaGeometry 2 successfully tackling a challenging geometry problem from the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in just 19 seconds.

Golden opportunity for AI development

However, Dr. Jeff Dean, Chief Scientific Officer of Google (co-founder of Google Brain, Google Translate, Gemini, etc.) believes that while AI advances are evident, especially in helping humans solve pressing problems such as predicting wildfire risks, monitoring livestock health, and supporting cancer diagnoses, AI applications must be held to stringent safety and reliability standards.

He emphasized the responsibility of AI developers to ensure that systems are not only efficient but also built on solid ethical foundations. “AI is not just a powerful tool for solving complex societal problems but also demands a high level of responsibility from researchers and engineers. At Google, the principles we adhere to in our research and development include fairness, safety, and societal benefit. This is because AI is revolutionizing healthcare, education, and social management, areas that cannot afford even the smallest mistakes,” said Mr. Jeff Dean.

According to Dr. Jeff Dean, the challenge for those working with AI is not just building powerful tools but also ensuring that they are ethical and that the principles are followed when combining AI and human intelligence. Additionally, to unlock AI’s full potential, governments and technology companies need to invest in education and enable young talents to access this technology.

In a discussion, Mr. Phung Viet Thang, Country Director of Intel Vietnam, stated that one of the biggest challenges in deploying AI in Vietnam is “unclear or lower-than-expected business efficiency.”

To stay on the right track, organizations need to identify the specific challenges they want to address or the business outcomes they aim to achieve through AI as a superior technology, rather than just following the trend. Businesses should understand that AI is not a destination but a technology that provides methods and tools to help them achieve their defined goals.

Mr. Thang also believes that Vietnam is at a golden time to join the strong AI development trend in the coming years. By leveraging AI to improve product quality, optimize processes, and enhance customer experience, Vietnam can bring about unprecedented changes in how work is done. The continuous advancement of AI technology presents a great opportunity for Vietnam to enhance its overall competitiveness.

“However, the AI boom will also bring challenges. As AI models continuously evolve, the approach to AI needs to be adaptable and flexible. Therefore, the technology infrastructure, as well as government regulations and social structures built and developed at the present time, need to be resilient and expandable,” Mr. Thang recommended.

AI Security Challenges

According to Kaspersky, a cybersecurity firm, as AI becomes more accessible, it will open doors to sophisticated cyberattacks. Malicious actors can automate attacks, streamline operations, and deploy complex campaigns to achieve illicit goals.

Specifically, through AI, attackers can exploit deceptive content, including text, images, audio, and video, to launch non-technical attacks. Large language models like ChatGPT-40 are used to create highly sophisticated scam scripts and messages. Overcoming language barriers, AI can write a convincing email based solely on information from social media. It can even imitate the writing style of the victim, making scam attempts harder to detect.

Deepfakes, once considered a scientific research product, have now become an “epidemic” in cybersecurity. The most common method is to impersonate celebrities for financial gain, followed by using deepfakes to steal accounts, make deceptive calls to friends and family of the victim to defraud them.

Additionally, attackers can target AI algorithms with “command injection” attacks, where malicious commands are inserted into large language models, or “adversarial attacks,” where hidden fields are added to images or audio to affect the machine learning system’s image classification ability.

Hanh Nguyen