Thailand’s AI Program Progress
When asked what Thailand’s most famous cuisine is, Abdul, a Thai AI chatbot, mentioned Tom Yum Goong soup. In addition to this, Abdul can also tell the inquirer to avoid Bangkok’s traffic jams by, for example, taking public transportation. According to the Nikkei Asian Review on the 3rd, Thailand is seeking to maintain a competitive advantage in the domestic AI market against the ever-invasive U.S. tech giants, and its project to create a generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool based on local languages, “Open ThaiGPT,” is making progress.
Thailand’s National Center for Electronics and Computer Technology (NCETC), in collaboration with three AI groups, launched the project in April 2023, six months after the release of ChatGPT by U.S.-based OpenAI, which has already reached 7 billion parameters.
Thailand’s challenges and responses
Thailand faces a huge funding gap in generative AI compared to US tech giants such as Google and Meta, according to the Nikkei Asian Review.Thaichai, director of the Open ThaiGPT project, said that if Thailand fails to make any contribution to generative AI, the country is in danger of losing its own identity and being at the mercy of the tech giants. He expressed concern about Thailand’s dependence on U.S. tech companies for AI applications and foreign interests’ firm control over data and Thailand’s domestic market. The Thai government and businesses are stepping up their cooperation in an attempt to reduce this dependence by increasing local technological prowess and ensuring national autonomy in the technology sector.
American tech companies are now entering Thailand in a big way. One such company, Microsoft CEO Nadella, an investor in OpenAI, has attempted to further develop AI in local languages. Like Thailand, many countries are at a disadvantage in competing with US tech companies, and Thailand’s efforts could serve as a test case for achieving autonomy in the age of AI. By developing local AI technology, Thailand hopes to be able to gain a foothold in the international market, while also better protecting its data security and interests.
Cooperation and development among ASEAN countries
Singapore spent S$70 million late last year to launch the National Multi-modal Large-Scale Language Model (NMLM) program, hoping to develop Southeast Asia’s first regionally-specific basic language model, marking a “major leap forward” in building the next frontier of AI capabilities in Singapore and the region, according to the website iTnews Asia. “A major leap forward”. Ong Chun Hui, assistant CEO of the Enterprise Technology Group at Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority, said that with the rapid advancement of technology, there is a strategic imperative to develop the sovereign capabilities of a large language model.
As the competition between the two global AI powers, the United States and China, continues to escalate, Southeast Asia’s reliance on their technology – especially in terms of the data, talent and hardware necessary for AI solutions – says an article on the website of the National University of Singapore’s Center for Asia and Globalization – could pose challenges and vulnerabilities. To address these challenges, ASEAN member states are actively promoting close cooperation with each other and with external partners.
The ASEAN Framework Agreement on Digital Economy, which is expected to be finalized in 2025, will establish a regulatory cooperation mechanism for AI-related standards and regulations to keep up with technological innovations in emerging fields such as AI. Among them, Singapore was the first to announce in February 2024 that it would invest US$743 million in AI research and development over the next five years. Other ASEAN member states such as Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines have each launched their own AI policy initiatives over the past five years. ASEAN has also released the ASEAN Guidelines on AI Governance and Ethics to regulate the use and development of AI in order to respect the digital rights of citizens while preventing any large tech companies or countries from monopolizing the AI market.
The site’s report added that ASEAN’s collective message is clear: “No country can dominate us, and no country is dominated.”
