Dear friends,
When entrepreneurs build a startup, it is often their speed and momentum that gives them a shot at competing with the tech behemoths. This is true of countries as well.
I was recently in Thailand, where I was delighted to see tremendous momentum building in AI (and sip the best Thai ice tea I’ve ever tasted). Even though Thailand is not as advanced in AI technology or applications as leading tech countries, the enthusiasm for building AI throughout government, corporations, and academia was thrilling. I came away heartened that AI’s benefits will be spread among many countries and convinced that one’s level of AI development right now matters less than your momentum toward increasing it.
Seeing the momentum behind AI in Thailand — where the per capita GDP is around one fifth that of Japan, and one tenth that of the United States — left me feeling that any country, company, or person has a shot at doing meaningful work in the field. While advanced economies such as the U.S. and China are still in the lead, generative AI has made the playing field more level. Foundation models, especially those with open weights, are significantly lowering the barriers to building meaningful AI projects. In Thailand, a lot of people I met weren’t just talking about AI, they were rolling up their sleeves and building. That buys a nation a lot more momentum than just talk.
I met with Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin and his Ministers of Higher Education and Education (primary/secondary) along with many staffers. It was delightful to hear the PM speak of his enthusiasm for AI. The ministers discussed how to (i) provide AI training and (ii) use AI to improve education in a variety of subjects. Happily, the focus was on creating value while thinking through realistic risks like AI’s potential to proliferate misinformation, and not a single person asked me about whether AI will lead to human extinction!
I also met with many business leaders and enjoyed seeing a rapid pace of experimentation with AI. KBTG, an affiliate of the country’s leading digital bank KBank, is working on a financial chatbot advisor, AI-based identity verification for anti-fraud, AI for auto insurance, and a Thai-language financial large language model. These features are growing mobile banking and increasing financial access. Many business leaders in other sectors, too, have asked their teams to run experiments. There are many AI applications yet to be built in industrial sectors, tourism, trade, and more! (KBTG is an investor in AI Fund, which I lead.)
I often visit universities in both developed and developing economies, and I’ve been surprised to see that universities in developing economies sometimes adopt AI faster. At Chulalongkorn University (known as Chula), I met with the University President Wilert Puriwat and Director of Chula AI Professor Proadpran Punyabukkana. Chula AI has rolled out campus-wide training in generative AI for faculty, staff, and students. In addition, it supports building AI applications such as AI screening for depression and gastrointestinal cancer.
It takes years to build up advanced technology. But momentum matters, and there will be many rewards along the journey. There’s no time like the present to start building!
Keep building,
Andrew