Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Vietnam,like many other countries, is in a bid to spur economic innovation withArtificial Intelligence (AI), but experts said the country is starting from ata low point and needs to make a huge effort to catch up with the global trend.

Such efforts wouldinclude focusing investment on training skilled workers and building anopen-source database.

Bui Hai Hung, a researcher fromGoogle DeepMind (USA), said the AI advances of the past decade could createcomprehensive changes in global industries and services, from healthcare toenergy.

He believes the AI laboratoriesestablished so far in Vietnam, such as those started by FPT and Zalo, are agood start.

However, training in the field ofAI remains limited due to a lack of funding, so State and business investmentis sorely needed.

“Although Vietnam has paid greatattention to AI applications, it still lacks a staff capable of accessing AIresearch at a global level,” Hung said.

Herve Vu Roussel, head of dataengineering at Sentifi, acknowledged the problem.

“A lack of engineers havingprofound knowledge on machine learning, or data scientists, is one of thechallenges for AI development in Vietnam”, Herve said.

According to a report by NexusFrontierTech, rubikAI and G&H, most AI companies in Vietnam are in thefirst stage of development and have fewer than 10 AI engineers. AI courses areoffered at only six universities in the country.

According to a report by TopDev,a recruitment network and ecosystem in mobile and IT, Vietnam will be short70,000 to 90,000 information and technology (IT) workers next year despiteincreasing salaries.

In the past five years, manystart-ups have developed projects related to artificial intelligence (AI) andmachine learning, and are willing to pay an AI engineer as much as 1,678 USD amonth, or 22,000 USD a year. However, the report said many businesses could notfind suitable personnel.

Duong Trong Tan, founder and CEOof Agilead Global, a firm providing AI training, coaching and consultingservices to individuals, organisations and start-ups in Vietnam, said this canbe addressed by enhancing the workforce for IT in general and AI in particularthrough a combination of university training and enterprise recruitment.

“In the era of rapid change liketoday, if a school is not associated with enterprises to improve their trainingprogramme and put in new content that businesses need or new technology, theycan hardly keep up with the pace of economic changes,” Tan said.

Bui Hai Hung from Google Deepmindsaid basic training courses for AI would be costly.

“It might need investment andsupport from the Government and enterprises,” Hung said.

Because AI devices learn howhumans think and act through the collection of massive data sets, they workbest when more data are available.

Herve Vu Roussel from Sentifisaid Vietnam’s weakness is in data and information.

“When you talk about AI, datacomes first,” he said. “But there just isn’t a lot of good data here in Vietnam.If you take a look at Google Maps, you’ll see that not all the roads are mappedcorrectly. AI is a data-driven field, so without good data, we’re at a deadend.”

Charles Ng, Appier’s VicePresident in charge of Enterprise AI, agreed, saying that for successful AIadoption, a company’s data must be solid.

“Getting solid datainfrastructure in place is still a big challenge that businesses in Vietnamface,” he said.

However, experts said they areoptimistic about Vietnam’s AI future.

“We have become more serious onthis matter; what Vietnam can do now is to strengthen its programme on dataengineering, data mining and databases,” he said.

“But most of all, we have tocreate a community for AI and nurture it,” he said.

According to a survey on 500Vietnamese firms conducted in 2018 by Vietnam Report, only 13.6 percent haveinvested in AI in production and business; 18.2 percent are studying the modeland 18.2 percent have plans for investment in the coming two to three years.Almost 50 percent of the surveyed companies do not have plans for AI investmentyet.-VNS/VNA