AI Development in Vietnam: Opportunities and Challenges

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is identified as the key to future economic and social development in Vietnam with practical applications such as chatbots, facial recognition, information management systems in government agencies, etc. However, this industry also faces many challenges ahead.

For many years, the world and Vietnam have talked a lot about the 4.0 Industrial Revolution. This covers different fields such as the Internet of Things, Blockchain, Biotechnology, etc., and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is seen as the core of this revolution.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the key of 4.0 Industrial Revolution

Big countries like the United States or China are focusing their resources on AI research with many projects of great value. According to The Future of Jobs report of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2020, the top 3 occupations that are forecast to grow strongly are jobs related to Data Science, AI and Machine Learning, and Big Data. In the near future, it is expected that most jobs will be influenced by AI.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

AI affects many areas in all aspects of social life that are very familiar to us. If you've ever heard of a camera-based facial authentication system, it's AI. If you've ever heard of a speech recognition system and speech-to-text software, it's also AI. If you've ever been familiar with the function of identifying information on an ID card, passport, or vehicle registration plate, it's AI too. And if you've heard a lot about Alexa or Siri, it's definitely AI.

AI affects many areas in all aspects of social life

So what is AI? In the simplest terms, AI is all about making machines smarter and doing tasks that normally require human intervention. For example, by applying AI, computers can distinguish colors, shapes, human faces or sounds, voices, etc. When it comes to AI, people often refer to technical terms like Machine Learning or Deep Learning.

Potential Opportunities for Artificial Intelligence in Vietnam

In recent years, the development of Artificial Intelligence in Vietnam has reached many milestones, resulting in practical applications in society. In particular, Vietnam Government identifies the development of AI as a national goal and sets a concrete plan for Vietnam to become one of the four leading countries in Southeast Asia in this field by 2030.

An example of how AI improves tourists’ experience

In June 2022, Ho Chi Minh City announced a plan to implement the Research and Development Program on Artificial Intelligence Applications in Ho Chi Minh City in the period of 2020-2030 to promote priority policies for the research and development of artificial intelligence. One feature of the plan that attracts big attention from the public is the initiative to bring artificial intelligence into teaching at a high school in the city.

The above information can show that AI is an opportunity for Vietnam to create breakthroughs in the near future.

But Are There any Challenges?

With the information above, if you think that AI can completely replace humans in every aspects, you may need to reconsider. Some difficulties in applying AI into reality make this scenario unlikely to happen.

A scene from video analytics using AI

One of the problems is that users don't really understand the true nature of AI because AI is thought to be perfect at all time. Basically, AI is created on the basis of learning human behaviors. When it reaches a certain level, without the addition of algorithms and information, the product's performance will stop there and cannot be further improved. Cases of disease diagnosis or facial recognition are the most controversial examples.

An example of how AI identifies objects through vision techniques

Another problem is data limitation because AI is built on data source provided by users and developers. Big data will make AI smarter and better respond to real-world requests. However, data collection is a hard work and time-consuming job. In particular, when it comes to important decision-making issues such as finance, banking or national security, AI has little opportunity to use this data source.

Quan Dinh Writer