AI (artificial intelligence) is becoming a key technology, guiding Ho Chi Minh City to develop into a smart super city by 2050. At events such as the Autumn Economic Forum 2025, GRECO 2025 or WISE HCMC+ 2025 recently held in the city, AI is considered a decisive factor in improving urban governance, quality of life and sustainable economic growth.
Smart Management
At the end of October 2025, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee issued the AI popularization program for citizens in the 2025-2030 period, aiming to equip basic knowledge and skills to apply AI in work, study and life, aiming to build human resources to adapt to smart cities and digital economy. In the 2026-2027 period, more than 100,000 people will be trained each year to apply AI proficiently (1% of the city's population), in the 2028-2030 period, it will increase by 5%/year, reaching 15% of the population (about 2 million people) by 2030.
AI brings many opportunities for Ho Chi Minh City to become a smart city, but comes with many challenges.
Ho Chi Minh City plans to organize short-term classes at agencies, cultural houses, libraries, community centers and online, instructing on the use of AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, etc. At the same time, the city aims for 50% of people to have a correct understanding of AI and be interested in the program, with about 1 million views on television and digital platforms.
Mr. Tran Bao Dinh, General Director of TitKul, said that AI is expected to become the "brain" to help Ho Chi Minh City manage urban operations more intelligently, from image recognition, automatic control to analyzing people's behavior and forecasting population needs. Combining AI with IoT, sensors, AR, simulation, the city can make decisions based on real-time data. Thanks to AI, Ho Chi Minh City's smart urban models not only upgrade technical infrastructure but also improve the quality of life through transportation, energy, water supply and drainage, education , healthcare and smart housing.
Becamex Group representative shared that the group is promoting digital transformation, automation, especially applying AI in management and operational processes. Industrial parks are being encouraged to apply technology to become smart, green and increase digital transformation capabilities. This is also a way to attract investors to participate in the city and the business ecosystem.
Professor Yuan Feng, Chinese Academy of Sciences , said that Ho Chi Minh City can achieve optimal efficiency when deploying new digital infrastructure and smart governance models, quickly catching up with international standards on greening and technology, especially AI.
Completing the data platform
However, to realize the vision of becoming a smart super city, Ho Chi Minh City is facing many challenges related to digital infrastructure and data management. Ms. Vo Thi Trung Trinh, Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Transformation Center, informed that the city currently has 168 wards, communes, and special zones. If technology is not deployed in the direction of centralizing a common platform and a unified database, it will continue to be stuck in fragmentation. The city is prioritizing removing these bottlenecks to gradually perfect the data platform, better serving the activities of the government, businesses, and people.
Mr. Dang Van Tu, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of CMC Corporation, said that the private sector is facing difficulties in the acceptance - payment - operation support mechanism, causing the digital transformation project to lack motivation. The biggest challenge is the lack of data consistency between ministries, branches and localities, each implementing in its own way, making it difficult to achieve the goal of "correct - sufficient - clean - live data". A smart city is not only based on technology infrastructure but also must ensure that all citizens can access and use public services equally. AI assistants, with the ability to recognize voices, automatically translate languages and have a friendly interface, are opening up many opportunities in this field.
Professor Young Sup Joo, Emeritus Professor of Seoul National University and former Minister of Small and Medium Enterprises and Startups of Korea, suggested that Vietnam should strengthen cooperation with international partners, such as the European Union, which has standards for developing AI megacities, as well as learn from Korea's experience. Mr. Sam Conroy, President of the Australian Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (AusCham), suggested that Ho Chi Minh City should start with small steps, digitizing simple services before expanding to complex areas, while maintaining regular dialogue with businesses, institutes/schools and social organizations.
Global Cooperation - Local Action
Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Nguyen Van Duoc said that AI brings unprecedented opportunities but also unprecedented challenges. To adapt, the city has identified the strategy of "Global Cooperation - Local Action", aiming to become a convergence point of technology, finance and knowledge of the whole country as well as the region. Specifically, Resolution No. 98/2023/QH15 dated June 24, 2023 of the National Assembly on piloting a number of specific mechanisms and policies for the development of Ho Chi Minh City has opened up new space for the city to experiment and create breakthroughs with unprecedented models. Strategic initiatives such as the Ho Chi Minh City International Finance Center (IFC) are being accelerated.
Source: https://nld.com.vn/ai-dan-loi-tp-hcm-thanh-sieu-do-thi-196251206201459872.htm
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