Macroeconomics/AI

Chatrudee Theparat

The government approved action plan to promote AI development.

The first meeting of the National AI Committee approved an action plan to promote the artificial intelligence development to create Thailand’s exponential growth by 2027.

Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha said the first meeting of the National AI Committee approved the action plan (2022-2027) to move ahead AI development because it plays a significant role in creating effective work among the public and private sectors and also in increasing productivity of industries.

“The government needs to provide ecosystem to develop AI in order to support Thailand’s AI environment to create exponential growth. They include to deregulate related legislation and regulations in order to reduce obstacles for AI development and cooperation among the public and private sectors to strengthen the role of AI.”

Currently, workforce shortage for AI is among the problem. The committee has asked for the Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation Ministry to accelerate to produce 13,500 skilled people via three skill levels - primary, medium and high-. Medium level, for example, includes engineers and innovators, while high skills the country needs 200-300 people to serve its AI ambition. Then, the committee will take a closer look at its development every six months.

The action plan is required to build the network and central platform to offer services to Thai society, aimed at encouraging investment in AI to grow by 10% a year.
Building Infrastructure to support AI is a must. Among them, it includes to carry out R&D by focusing on core technology development and research to build an AI platform. Its goal is to develop 100 innovations which is expected to help contribute about 48 billion baht into Thai economy. In addition, it hopes to promote AI constantly to use in day-to-day operation among government agencies, industries and startups to increase work efficiency.

However, the government has to modernize the existing legislation and national policy, and impose ethical standard for the use of AI. Importantly, 600,000 people should be educated to understand the AI more deeply so that they will get new ideas for its development.