February 6, 2025
HANOI – In the wake of rapid artificial intelligence (AI) advancement which opens a new era with numerous job opportunities and attractive income, Việt Nam has faced a formidable challenge in developing international-standard AI talent, requiring an urgent need for quality over quantity in technical education.
Recent AI breakthroughs, including Chinese company DeepSeek’s AI model and US OpenAI Inc’s Deep Research, highlighted how leading tech giants could create world-changing inventions through their talent pools which have been developed over decades with training strategies.
For Việt Nam’s universities currently offering AI programmes, the focus must shift from enrollment numbers to educational excellence. Industry experts said that degrees alone no longer suffice as employers demand practical expertise.
However, another significant hurdle that Vietnam is facing lies with a shortage of qualified AI instructors capable of training the next generation of tech innovators.
To address the challenge, Việt Nam should pursue a three-pronged strategy.
First, it should recruit more Vietnamese scientists from abroad. Most recently, the country saw the return of several distinguished scholars such as Dr. Cấn Trần Thành Trung from the California Institute of Technology (the US), Dr. Trần Minh Tuấn from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (the US), Dr. Lê Trung Hoàng from Singapore’s School of Computing and Information Systems, and Dr. Lê Văn Vẻ from the Republic of Korea’s University of Science and Technology, all joining Hồ Chí Minh City University of Science.
The second approach involves offering scholarships to exceptional students for study at world-leading AI institutions while the third component focuses on attracting both Vietnamese and international AI experts to work in Việt Nam.