As part of a delegation of 50 American businesses visiting Vietnam earlier this week, a representative of Meta (the company that owns the social network Facebook) shared about the company's plans in Vietnam as well as commented on the increasingly developing field of artificial intelligence.
“We are here to support and cooperate with all of you. It can be said that we do not face any limits and Vietnam has the potential to become the new dragon in the field of artificial intelligence development,” said Rafael Frankel, Director of Public Policy, Southeast Asia, Meta.
Mr. Rafael Frankel.
- In your opinion, what can Vietnam do to accelerate the development of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry?
I think Vietnam has been doing very well in many areas, and now let's apply those lessons to AI.
For example, let’s look at how your economy has developed over the past 30 years. The Vietnamese people are driven and energetic, intelligent, determined and entrepreneurial. They are also very interested in technology. And your education system supports this.
You have partners from American companies, especially technology companies like Meta, and companies that are very interested in coming here to build partnerships together in many areas. We have done a lot of training programs to help both Vietnamese entrepreneurs and engineers, both in technology. The US and Vietnamese governments have been very receptive.
Vietnam has meanwhile maintained an open environment for technology and digital economic investment. This is also very important, creating conditions for Vietnamese businesses to be successful. Looking at all that experience, as we enter the AI era, this development will only become faster. Keep doing what you are doing, and cooperate with us.
By 2024, we will launch our AI products across multiple countries in Asia Pacific, I think Vietnam will be one of them. That will enable a generation of Vietnamese tech entrepreneurs to participate in building these products, to make them widely available to the public.
Some of the products, like big language models, will be innovation platforms where Vietnamese researchers and entrepreneurs can sign up to use them. Those activities will push things forward. So I hope Vietnamese tech entrepreneurs will continue to work with us. And together we will build a great future where Vietnam, as I said, can become the AI dragon of the region.
- So, in your opinion, which industries in Vietnam can best apply AI?
I think we’re in the very early stages of AI. And it’s hard to predict where it’s going. But that’s the beauty of it. We didn’t know where social media was going when Facebook was founded 20 years ago. Now it has 4 billion users around the world.
So I think the beauty of AI right now is that it has limitless potential. We've seen innovative entrepreneurs across industries and everywhere, figuring out how to use AI naturally on their own. We're not the ones telling them how to use it.
We are just providing the platform and the tools, and they are the ones building it. We have seen incredible applications of AI, for example in health, education. Stories about how AI can help create new drugs and medicines, can help cure more diseases, or can apply AI to solve climate change. Or like a student I spoke to who developed an app to help stop wildlife poaching in India.
The beauty of AI is that it can be used for everything. So this is a huge opportunity for industries across Vietnam and globally.
- Can you give an estimate of Meta's investment in Vietnam in the coming time?
I don't think we can give a single number yet. But I will talk about the areas where we will invest.
For many years, we have invested in providing the necessary skills for the digital economy, for Vietnamese small and medium enterprises (SMEs). We have trained about 85,000 SMEs in Vietnam in digital economic skills. We also invest heavily in digital literacy training (the ability each individual needs in the digital environment), for hundreds of thousands of students and teachers, and want to increase this number to millions.
We also support Vietnamese SMEs in using the business messaging function to support their business. This year, our business messaging conference will continue to be held.
AI applications have also been invested in to limit harmful content on our platform in Vietnam, and we keep the tools free so that many people can access them.
Regarding the future of AI products, I think they will be launched in Vietnam soon. We have talked about investing in metaverse technology in Vietnam. Meta sees a bright future in Vietnam, especially with the partnership between the government, businesses and people of the two countries.
- When do you think Vietnam will become a 'dragon' in AI?
This depends on Vietnamese businesses and the government. But as I said, looking at your incredible economic success story over the past generation, and beyond, we can certainly ask, will this happen again in the AI industry? I think so.
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