Ki-Ki, the first Vietnamese chatbot, was presented at Zalo AI Summit 2018 in late December 2018, where Vietnam’s AI community showed optimism about the development of AI (Photo: brandsvietnam.com) Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Like many other Asiancountries, Vietnam is racing its regional counterparts to spur economic innovationwith artificial intelligence (AI). Experts say voice recognition technology,AI, blockchain and big data will be major trends in 2020.
Although Vietnam is on the back foot in terms of AI and faceshuge challenges, including a weak technology sector and lack of humanresources, the country has managed to build a vibrant AI ecosystem and set up aplan for research and development with breakthrough strategies.
At the same time, many organisations and businesses in Vietnamare now trying to keep up with their foreign rivals by building technicalskills to shape raw ideas into fully serviceable and effective AI applications.
Viettel Cyberspace Center (VTCC), established in 2014, hasfocused research on AI. VTCC.AI focuses on providing three services for speechprocessing, including TTS (Text to Speech), Speech to Text, and Voice Wake-up.The products can be applied to a variety of platforms, such as readingnewspapers, books, or in automated customer care systems.
Zalo AI plans to develop applications such as Zalo Brain andZalo Assistant.
At the Zalo AI Summit conference held at the end of 2018, the Ki-Ki virtualassistant was officially launched with the ability to recognise the voice ofVietnamese people and answer with northern, central and southern accents.
ELSA is an English pronunciation training applicationfounded by Van Dinh Hong Vu. The application uses AI to recognise voiceaccuracy and help users improve their skills.
AI is also providing strong support in the field oftransport. Self-driving cars with AI can automatically avoid people orobstacles, and are being used in the Ecopark urban area in Hanoi. In HCM City,AI has been used to help monitor traffic cameras and adjust traffic lights.
In health, AI is also being employed to improve quality,efficiency, overcome risks, medical incidents and reduce hospital overcrowding.
The 115 People's Hospital and Gia An 115 Hospital in HCM Cityare the first two hospitals in Vietnam to apply Rapid Artificial Intelligencesoftware in stroke diagnosis and treatment.
According to Ngo Quoc Hung, Creative Director of COTAI – thecentre for talents in AI – who has been teaching AI to students of the Le HongPhong High School for the Gifted in HCM City, AI is no longer unfamiliar tohigh school students. In their eyes, AI is now an interesting subject whichoffers useful information and applications.
“In several more years, Vietnam will have many good engineersin AI and the number of start-ups in AI will increase,” Hung said.
Tu Nguyen, managing director of VietA.I Community, who hasbeen working for 10 years in emerging technologies, said there were 25 workersin the international payment division of HSBC five years ago.
Nowadays, when the work volume is five times higher, the division only needsthree workers, because a big workload is now undertaken by computers.
Also according to the expert, at Minh Long II TechnicalCeramics factory in Binh Duong province, 70 percent of work is being undertakenby robots.
“This shows that AI has penetrated into all areas in Vietnam, raising the needof developing the labour force in the field of AI,” he said.
Long way to go
Dang Hoang Vu, Science Director of the FPT Corporation, said that 2020 will bethe year of "popularising AI".
And while Vietnam has a lot of potential for AI development,most AI start-ups are still at a very early stage of development.
The country’s AI start-ups are still facing many difficultieswhen resources are limited, training is inadequate and many high-skilledworkers choose to work overseas.
According to the 2018 Vietnam AI Landscape Report publishedby Nexus Frontier Tech initiative RubikAI, almost 60 percent of AIcompanies in Vietnam have been in business for less than two years, and only 34percent have raised more than US$200,000 from external sources.
Also according to the report, two other big challenges for Vietnamare a shortage of talent and the ability to approach data.
Vu said that in order to develop faster than its competitors,the Government needs to have policies to socialise AI and encourage businessesto use artificial intelligence in business activities.
He also emphasised the importance of effective connectionamong the community and major businesses, among the components of the AIecosystem./.
VNA
