AI in Southeast Asia

Schools and universities

Understanding dynamic learning profiles in AI-supported environments in Vietnam: Evidence from a three-wave latent transition analysis

Tracks Vietnamese undergraduates over a semester and finds three learning profiles (optimal, moderate, maladaptive) defined by AI self-efficacy, cognitive offloading and metacognition.

Preprint · September 21, 2026 · Research Square rs-10468699/v1

Jobs and the economy

Behind Malaysia's Data Centre Boom

Explains how Johor became one of the world's largest emerging AI infrastructure clusters and the policy, geopolitical and grid problems that follow.

Report · September 1, 2026 · Trends in Southeast Asia 2026/22

Jobs and the economy

Generative AI and Labor Displacement in the Global South: Evidence from Philippine Business Process Outsourcing

After ChatGPT's release, employment growth in Philippine BPO stalled in the provinces most exposed to generative AI while continuing elsewhere, an early sign of displacement in an outsourcing hub.

Working paper · August 1, 2026 · SSRN

Health

From Classification to Localization and Clinical Validation: Large-Scale Development of a Deep Learning System for Thoracic Disease Detection on Chest Radiographs in Thailand

Documents the multi-year build of a Thai chest X-ray AI (Inspectra CXR) that generalizes across hospitals with AUROC near 0.97 and is rated highly usable by radiologists.

Preprint · July 10, 2026 · arXiv 2607.09305

Jobs and the economy

Generative AI and labour markets in ASEAN: Significant exposure, limited disruption, uneven preparedness

Puts nearly 80 million ASEAN workers (22.9 percent of employment) in GenAI-exposed occupations yet finds no sign of broad displacement so far, with women overrepresented in the most exposed jobs and a gap between exposure and institutional readiness.

Report · July 8, 2026 · ILO Brief

Government and rules

AI Safety Governance, the Southeast Asian Way

Surveys AI safety and governance moves in every Southeast Asian country, including Timor-Leste, and argues the region is converging on a pragmatic, development-first model distinct from EU or US approaches.

Report · August 25, 2025 · Brookings Governance Studies report

Language and models

SEA-LION: Southeast Asian Languages in One Network

Introduces the SEA-LION v3 family of open LLMs continually pretrained on Southeast Asian language data and evaluated on the SEA-HELM leaderboard.

Journal article · April 8, 2025 · arXiv 2504.05747 / Accepted at IJCNLP-AACL 2025 (Main Track)

Government and rules

Election Integrity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Lessons from Indonesia

Reviews how campaigns and buzzers used generative AI and deepfakes in Indonesia's 2024 election and draws regulatory lessons for the region.

Report · June 25, 2024 · Fulcrum commentary

Language and models

Large Language Models Only Pass Primary School Exams in Indonesia: A Comprehensive Test on IndoMMLU

IndoMMLU collects 14,000 questions from Indonesian primary to university exams and shows that even GPT-3.5 only clears primary-school level, with especially weak local-language and culture knowledge.

Journal article · October 7, 2023 · arXiv 2310.04928 / Accepted at EMNLP 2023

ISEAS Perspective (ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute)Analysis

Who Can Actually Stop the Machine? The Institutional Test for AI Governance in Southeast Asia

Aditya Vikram Kashyap · September 29, 2026

Argues that the region's growing stack of AI guides, laws and bills says little about whether any institution can actually refuse or halt a deployment, and proposes three tests: a named decision-maker, independence from commercial pressure, and technical capacity to evaluate systems. Compares Singapore's sectoral regulators, Vietnam's new law, Malaysia's proposed bill and Indonesia's pending presidential regulations and finds effectiveness still unproven in all four.

Responds to the wave of 2026 AI rule-making (Vietnam's AI law in force since March, Malaysia's AI Governance Bill, Indonesia's Perpres) by asking who holds the off switch.

FulcrumOpinion

Thailand's Passport to AI Controversy

Mathis Lohatepanont · September 28, 2026

Examines the Thai government's TH-AI Passport scheme, which promises free AI tool access to five million citizens, and argues its goals are muddled, its usage quotas too tight, and its procurement opaque. It matters because a flagship AI-adoption programme risks becoming a subsidy without measurable productivity gains.

Responds to the budget and procurement controversy around the TH-AI Passport rollout and the prime minister's AI pitch at the Shanghai World AI Conference.

Khazanah Research InstituteAnalysis

Why AI Is Not (Yet) Behind Malaysia's Job Losses

Mikhail Rosli · September 28, 2026

Pushes back on claims that AI drove Malaysia's 2026 retrenchment surge, the worst since 2020 and concentrated among white-collar workers in the Klang Valley, arguing that occupational AI exposure measures what is technically possible, not what firms have actually deployed. Cites thin evidence of production-scale AI use and the ATM-and-teller history, and calls for data linking firm-level adoption to worker outcomes.

Responds to public alarm over Malaysian layoffs and to the government's AI Nation 2030 messaging.

FulcrumAnalysis

For Southeast Asia, the AI Race Is About Access, Not Supremacy

Zenobia Chan · September 16, 2026

Argues that the region's real stake in the US-China AI contest is reliable, affordable, locally usable access rather than frontier capability, and maps dependencies across chips, cloud, power and language coverage. Recommends hedging and diversification to secure what the author calls resilient access.

Adapted from an ISEAS Trends in Southeast Asia paper; sits alongside the Pax Silica vs WAICO pressure on regional governments.

The Jakarta PostAnalysis, paywalled

AI boom: Can Indonesia move from market to maker?

Abdurohman · September 1, 2026

Prompted by CoreWeave's plan for three Indonesian data centres, the author warns that a country importing chips and cloud services without tech exports will see AI widen its trade deficit. He calls for a policy pivot into tech manufacturing and infrastructure so Indonesia captures value rather than just demand.

Connects to the hyperscaler build-out across Java and the regional race with Malaysia and Singapore.

Rest of WorldOpinion

Growth without work: The human cost of the AI revolution

Jibu Elias · August 5, 2026

Argues that AI is automating cognitive work fastest in the Global South, where workers have least access to augmentation, producing economic growth that bypasses employment. Uses displaced Filipino transcriptionists and call-centre staff as the leading example of the pattern.

Connects to the BPO sector's exposure to generative AI and the Philippine Magna Carta for BPO Workers debate.