Elyssa Lopez · · 4 min readSEA’s cheapest edge over AI: its people
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In focus
- How AI is changing – not eliminating – jobs in Southeast Asia
- What Taiwan can offer in the AI industry, other than its chips
- What VNLife was in 2020
Hello reader,
How many internships did you complete before graduating from college? These days, it’s common for students to rack up two or three before getting their diploma. In Manila a decade ago, that wasn’t the case for me.
It’s one of the trends I picked up while working on our first top story today with my colleague Jofie Yordan. More graduates know they need solid work experience, and fluency with AI tools, just to be employable in today’s job market.
The good news is that recent graduates in Southeast Asia are still in demand, if they build those skills.
While firms in the US are equipping staff with chatbots to handle grunt work, hiring a recent graduate is still far more cost-effective in the region.
Personal ambitions aside, it’s time to look at a nation’s AI ambition.
Dive into an Insights piece on how Taiwan can elevate its stature in the AI industry. Our guest contributor, a Taiwanese AI startup founder, argues that the island can bring more to the table than just chips – it can in fact tap into both its hardware and software strengths.
With the many efficiency promises of AI, the technology continues to drive everyone – from people to whole countries – to do more, or risk fading to irrelevance.
Elyssa Lopez, journalist
Top Stories
1️⃣ AI transforms entry-level work in SEA, but new grads stay hirable
Image credit: Timmy Loen
Job marketplaces in Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines have logged double-digit growth in listings that demand AI skills over the past year. As one executive put it: “Requiring an AI skill today is like requiring employees to know Microsoft Office.”
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