AI Development in Vietnam: Severe Lack of Experts

According to a group of scientists who conducted the Vietnam Economic and Trade Annual Report 2024, which the University of Commerce announced today, April 3, the severe shortage of experts is the biggest challenge in applying and developing AI technology in Vietnam.

High business interest in AI

With the theme of the report "AI Technology in the Digital Age", scientists from the University of Commerce outlined an overall picture of Vietnam's economy in recent years in the context of AI's strong impact on all aspects of life. Through many sources of documents introduced by scientists, it shows that Vietnam is a country that stands out compared to the Asia-Pacific region in terms of business readiness for AI applications.

Associate Professor Phan The Cong, Scientific Secretary, representative of the group compiling the Vietnam 2024 annual economic and trade report, said that the shortage of experts is the biggest challenge in AI development in Vietnam. PHOTO: VIET YEN

74% of Vietnamese enterprises have a digital strategy, higher than the regional average of 63%. This contributes to improving the level of technology application of Vietnamese enterprises and brings many benefits such as promoting business efficiency, improving employee satisfaction and strengthening cybersecurity.

Up to 98% of Vietnamese businesses said the main benefit from investing in technology applications was a clear improvement in business operations, 91% saw enhanced cybersecurity and 87% acknowledged an improvement in customer experience.

Nearly 80% of Vietnamese businesses have used AI in the past 12 months, exceeding the regional average of 69%. 46% of Vietnamese businesses have invested in upgrading technology skills for their entire team, including the leadership, compared to the regional average of 40%.

These figures show that Vietnamese enterprises are actively applying technology and AI to improve efficiency and competitiveness, while focusing on developing technology human resources to meet increasing demand.

Lack of experts to develop AI in Vietnam

According to the Vietnam Economic and Trade Annual Report 2024 of the University of Commerce, the biggest challenge in applying and developing AI in Vietnam is the shortage of high-tech human resources, while human resources are the trump card in the AI ​​race.

Not only are Vietnamese companies competing for the best Vietnamese AI engineers and researchers, but international corporations and the world's leading companies working in AI also want to take advantage of this elite force.

The war for talent has attracted a significant amount of Vietnam's scarce AI human resources, while the training of professional AI human resources is still weak and lacking. Although universities are accelerating, even signing cooperation agreements with major technology partners from Korea, Japan, the US, Australia... to open international AI research centers in Vietnam, the speed and quality of training are also assessed as "difficult to keep up with demand" because the number of universities that really train well in this field can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Even information technology human resource training, which is considered the "outer ring" for the development and application of new digital technologies, is lacking about 100,000 - 200,000 people each year.

"According to Nexus FrontierTech's 2019 report, Vietnam's AI human resources only meet 1/10 of market demand. According to the 2024 report of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Vietnam has 700 engineers specializing in AI but only about 300 AI experts.

Therefore, one of the biggest challenges for AI development in Vietnam is the lack of specialized and high-quality human resources," Associate Professor Phan The Cong, Scientific Secretary and representative of the report compilation team, shared.

The report's editorial team also said that in recent times, experts have repeatedly recommended that in order to meet the huge demand for AI human resources in the next 10 years, Vietnam needs to spend a large amount of investment to simultaneously deploy many broad approaches, including formal training, combining corporate and university training, community training and mass open online education.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/phat-trien-ai-tai-viet-nam-thieu-tram-trong-chuyen-gia-185250403192649075.htm