JAKARTA – Youths in Southeast Asia may have embraced artificial intelligence, but institutions and educators have yet to keep pace in properly guiding the use of the frontier technology, according to the ASEAN Foundation and Google.org.
The ASEAN Foundation, the regional bloc’s development arm, and Google.org, the charitable arm of the search engine giant Google, on Wednesday published the ASEAN Digital Outlook report during the AI Ready ASEAN: 3rd Regional Policy Convening meeting in Manila.
The report is part of AI Ready ASEAN, an initiative launched in 2024 by the ASEAN Foundation with a US$5 million grant from Google.org aimed at boosting AI literacy across ASEAN member states.
“Across ASEAN, we see that the adoption of AI has grown much more quickly than the ability of our systems to guide it,” Piti Srisangnam, executive director of the ASEAN Foundation, said in a statement on Wednesday.
He said the ASEAN Digital Outlook seeks to examine not only how AI is being used, but also how ready institutions, educators and societies across Southeast Asia are to use it properly.
“This is important so [governments] can create policies that protect public trust, strengthen creativity and ensure that AI can benefit the whole of society, not just the economy,” Piti said.
AI Ready ASEAN has also sought to gauge readiness in the education sector through surveys conducted in all 10 ASEAN countries. The findings show that youths are more willing to engage with the technology than older generations.
ANN/The Jakarta Post
