The Impact of AI on Vietnam's Labor Market
The popularity of generative AI is predicted by many experts to continue to accelerate in 2024. According to Ms. Bee Kheng, President of ASEAN at technology company Cisco, AI will move from being a “nice to have” technology to an important, must-have position.
The representative of Cisco ASEAN region analyzed that the AI industry is forecasted to be one of the main drivers of the global economy in the next decade. However, not all organizations are fully prepared to take advantage of this opportunity. Cisco's research shows that only 27% of organizations in Vietnam are fully prepared to deploy and utilize AI, of which 84% admit to being concerned about the impact of AI on business operations if they remain passive in the next 12 months.
In a recent analysis of the impact of AI on the Vietnamese labor market, Dr. Jung Woo Han, Senior Lecturer of Human Resource Management and Entrepreneurship, Faculty of Business, RMIT University, said that AI tools help improve human productivity, and in general are still not enough to completely replace the workforce.
“Although rapidly developing AI fields could pose a significant threat in the near future, experts believe that its impact may still be limited to a certain scale, specifically, people working in the service sector will be affected more than those in the manufacturing sector,” shared Dr. Jung Woo Han.
Notably, according to RMIT experts, content creation and repetitive office jobs are likely to be replaced by generative AI, including market analysis, technical documentation writing and website development, which were once considered stable jobs for university graduates.
Analyzing more closely the Vietnamese labor market, Dr. Jung Woo Han said that as an emerging economy that still relies heavily on manufacturing and agriculture, Vietnam will be less affected by AI. Therefore, the short-term impact of AI on the Vietnamese labor market will be relatively low compared to developed countries.
However, the RMIT expert pointed out: That does not mean that the Vietnamese job market is safe from disruptive technology and certain service sectors, such as tourism, will be more affected as they are expected to grow rapidly in the next few years. When advanced AI combines with the latest robotics technology, the job market in these sectors may be 'shaken up'.
To support his claim, Dr. Jung Woo Han cited information from OpenAI - the developer of ChatGPT, stating that jobs requiring college degrees will be at greater risk than jobs requiring only a high school degree. This is because people with education working in service sectors require more content creation. Not only that, the ability to create content combined with direct interaction elements also threatens frontline employees in the service sector, such as the way an AI called Sapia can interview candidates using chatbots during the recruitment process.
'It's important to develop emerging AI skills'
Giving advice to Vietnamese workers, Dr. Jung Woo Han recommends that instead of worrying too much about how to keep their jobs, it is important to develop emerging AI skills. “Although all skills and knowledge can be gradually replaced by AI, there is one area that can never be replaced by any technology. That is a positive attitude to build a culture of productivity, nurture innovation and creativity, thereby unlocking the unlimited potential of the organization,” Dr. Jung Woo Han stated.
Sharing the findings from the 'RMIT-Deloitte Human Resources 2023' panel discussion, Dr Jung Woo Han said: Vietnamese businesses are not yet fully aware of how AI can create specific value for their daily work. "At the panel discussion, Associate Professor Pham Cong Hiep, Acting Deputy Dean of Research and Innovation at RMIT Vietnam's School of Business, raised an important issue: AI is designed to communicate with humans through a conversational interface," Dr Jung Woo Han added.
Learning about AI should be like learning a new language, according to RMIT experts. As more people are trained to communicate effectively with AI, it can help create and deliver more valuable results. At the same time, there are significant concerns about the reliability and ethics of AI dominating the ability to generate knowledge in society. Because generative AI 'tries to answer our questions even when it doesn't fully understand'.
“The reliability and validity of AI-generated answers are often questioned, raising issues of copyright and plagiarism. If more and more content is generated based on a dominant AI in the market, their AI algorithms will create certain biases. In addition, there are many reports and studies showing that AI can exacerbate racism and other forms of discrimination in human society. Therefore, a legal framework is needed to prevent these negative impacts,” Dr. Jung Woo Han suggested.
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