Google's Chief Scientist: Vietnam has an advantage in AI.

Dr. Jeff Dean believes that AI is bringing about many powerful changes - Photo: TRONG NHAN

The GenAI Summit 2024 conference took place on August 18th in Ho Chi Minh City, bringing together leading technology experts from around the world .

The most talked-about keynote speech at the conference was given by Dr. Jeff Dean, Google's chief scientific officer and co-founder of many popular Google products such as Google Translate, Google Brain, and Gemini.

This is the first time this renowned Google expert has been in Vietnam to share his knowledge with science and technology enthusiasts in the country.

Dr. Jeff Dean argues that the development of AI is dramatically changing computer technologies in general.

Previously, many people criticized computers for being unintelligent because they couldn't understand many forms of information or human language. Now, AI enables computers to process many types of data that were previously difficult to use.

Jeff Dean points out that the past 10 years have been a period in which AI technologies have witnessed many revolutionary advances.

For example, as early as 2013, the deep complex neural network (AlexNet) was first published, marking a turning point for AI image processing technology, improving accuracy from 15.9% to 63.3%.

Similarly in the field of speech recognition, Dr. Jeff Dean points out that in 5 years, the word error processing rate of many AI applications has decreased from 15.25% to just 2.5%.

"2.5% is actually much more useful. Obviously, if your speech recognition system gets only 1 out of 7 words wrong, it's very different from getting 1 out of 40 words wrong," said Jeff Dean.

According to him, from the ability to solve individual tasks, new AI applications are being developed in a multi-modal direction.

The input data can include text, audio, images, and video ; the computer can process them into encoded strings and then return the result in text, images, audio, etc.

In particular, AI has great potential to enter the semiconductor field. He explained that designing a new chip is currently time-consuming, requiring dozens to hundreds of experts across many different disciplines.

The ability of AI to "self-learn," process data, and multitask could be applied to the semiconductor industry to reduce manpower and increase accuracy.

For example, AI can help assess which chip size is optimal, consumes the least energy, and so on. More importantly, some AI designs can be processed in 24 hours instead of taking up to 60 weeks if handled entirely by humans.

Dr. Jeff Dean added: "The potential of AI to transform the world is enormous. And I think Vietnam has a very good advantage with its strong education system and is attracting a lot of people into this field."

The discussion session included many Vietnamese technology experts working at Google - Photo: TRONG NHAN

At the event, Ms. Nguyen Thi Bich Ngoc, Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment, stated that according to research on Vietnam's digital economy, it is projected that by 2030, the annual economic impact of digital technology in Vietnam could reach 1,733,000 billion VND, equivalent to approximately 74 billion USD.

In this development, AI will make a significant contribution to the digital economy.

Furthermore, Ms. Ngoc stated that according to research by Thundermark Capital, Vietnam and Singapore are currently the two Southeast Asian representatives among the top 30 globally in AI research, presenting many opportunities to attract AI investment in Vietnam in the near future.

Dr. Vu Duy Thuc, co-founder of the New Turing Institute, believes that a challenge for AI development in Vietnam is data, as the current input data sources for solving AI-based problems in the country are not yet optimized.

Currently, training many AI models still utilizes data from developed countries such as the US and Europe, which leads to discrepancies in some applications when implemented in Vietnam.

However, from another perspective, according to Dr. Thuc, Vietnam also has a key advantage in the data sector. In countries like the US, collecting "clean" data for technologies like AI is often very expensive. In Vietnam, it is currently possible to collect "clean" data at a low cost.

Therefore, according to him, more legal frameworks are needed to pave the way for access to domestic data sources in a way that both encourages it and ensures compliance with Vietnamese laws.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/giam-doc-khoa-hoc-google-viet-nam-co-loi-the-ve-ai-2024081815461921.htm