Google committed to a significant investment of 36 billion baht to expand its cloud infrastructure and data centres in Bangkok and Chon Buri, announced on Monday, September 30.

Ruth Porat, the President and Chief Investment Officer of Alphabet and Google, highlighted that this expansion aims to meet the growing demand for cloud services in Southeast Asia and globally, while also promoting Thailand’s role in the AI economy.

The post Google invests 36 billion baht to boost Thai cloud and AI services first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

HO CHI MINH CITY — Alibaba plans to build a data center in Vietnam to store data locally in compliance with legal requirements, while it currently relies on government-owned facilities.

The Chinese tech group told Nikkei Asia that for now it rents space for computer servers from telecommunications companies Viettel and VNPT, providing one example of how companies have responded since a contentious law took effect in 2022. Google, Amazon and others fought hard against Vietnam’s plan to force them to keep data in the country, but the policy ultimately went through towards the end of that year.

As a result, businesses have been looking for cross-border options.

Dang Minh Tam, solution architect lead at Alibaba Cloud, said the company uses colocation — a term for renting out space from data center operators — partnering with the two state companies to park client data locally. But it also backs up data at its own server farms located across the region, from Taiwan to Singapore.

Alibaba plans to build a data center in Vietnam to keep pace with demand in one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies, Tam said. He said he did not yet know the cost and declined to give a timeline for the project, as the details have not been made public. The cost of building a data center can exceed $1 billion.

“Vietnam is a very [high] potential market,” Tam said in an interview. “There’s a lot of space to grow.”

One reason companies like Alibaba might want to build their own servers, in addition to cost considerations, is to ensure greater security and control over their information.

Liability can be an issue when multiple companies are involved in managing the same data, said Leif Schneider, counsel at law firm Luther.

Contracts must be clear “so you always know who bears what risk and responsibility,” he said at a cloud and data center conference in Ho Chi Minh City last week.

Local companies, meanwhile, share Alibaba’s bullish outlook on the market.

Viettel IDC, run by Vietnam’s military, told Nikkei that its customers from Alibaba to Microsoft are demanding environmental, social and governance (ESG) improvements.

It calls its approach “ESGT,” with the added use of technology. For example, tech can be used to track and optimize water use, which is used to keep computers cool and can rack up big costs. Viettel does not currently use much renewable energy but is aiming to make renewables count for 30% of its power consumption by 2030, said technical department manager Nguyen Dinh Tuan.

“We need to prepare for the data center boom,” he said in an interview. “We need to prepare for the sustainability trend.”

Viettel projects the Southeast Asian country’s data center market will expand 15% a year for the foreseeable future, and likely more if a big cloud company like Alibaba invests there.

The expansion is fueled in part by the data localization rules, which Hanoi admits violate its free trade agreements, but which ease the one-party state’s ability to access data. The rules have been a boon for cloud providers that already have server farms in Vietnam, including gaming unicorn VNG and IT company CMC, which said it will construct at least two data centers in the next few years, potentially doubling its capacity.

Vietnam should look to Malaysia and Thailand, whose markets really took off once international players entered the competition, said Evolution Data Centers CEO Darren Webb.

“The countries that try to protect their domestic markets, that doesn’t work,” he said at the industry conference. “The pie doesn’t get bigger.”

See original post

The post Alibaba to build Vietnam data center to follow local storage law first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

Plans are underway by the Digital Economy and Society (DES) Ministry in Thailand to establish a new national artificial intelligence (AI) committee. The initiative is part of the second phase of the national AI strategy. The strategy is a cornerstone of Thailand’s ASEAN Digital Economy and AI Hub Plan, a key driver for the country’s digital economy.

The ministry also intends to utilise a digital ID platform to bolster the digital wallet handout scheme.

DES Minister Prasert Jantararuangtong, while giving his keynote speech at Huawei’s Digital and Intelligence APAC Congress 2024 in  Bangkok, emphasised the country’s commitment to digital and intelligence technology development. He stated that the digital economy is perceived as a growth engine to enhance Thailand’s competitiveness and electronic transaction efficiency.

Keep reading

The post Thailand’s DES ministry to establish national AI committee first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

HANOI, VIETNAM — U.S. chipmaker Nvidia’s chief executive said on Monday the company will expand its partnership with Vietnam’s top tech firms and support the
country in training talent for developing artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure.

Nvidia, which has already invested $250 million in Vietnam, has so far partnered with leading tech companies to deploy AI in the cloud, automotive and healthcare industries, a document published by the White House in September showed when Washington upgraded diplomatic relations with Vietnam.

“Vietnam is already our partner as we have millions of clients here,” Jensen Huang, Nvdia’s CEO said at an event in Hanoi in his first visit to the country.

“Vietnam and Nvidia will deepen our relations, with Viettel, FPT, Vingroup, VNG being the partners Nvidia looks to expand partnership with,” Huang said, adding Nvidia would support Vietnam’s artificial training and infrastructure.

Keep reading

The post Nvidia to Expand Ties with Vietnam, Support AI Development first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

The post China vows closer security ties with Mekong states as cyber scams, Myanmar unrest have cross-border impact first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

(Bangkok) – The Cambodian government has issued an order to internet service providers to block access to online websites and social media accounts of three major independent media outlets, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should lift its orders to block access to the three outlets – The Cambodia Daily, Radio Free Asia (RFA), and Kamnotra.

The action was taken under a directive issued in July 2023 that requires blocking media web sites that the Department of Information and Audiovisual considers to “disseminate misleading news affecting the honor and reputation of the Royal Government and that fail to comply with the requirements … [of] the Ministry of Information.”

Keep reading

The post Cambodia: Access to Independent Media Blocked first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

JAKARTA – Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen said growing disinformation had become the most difficult challenge for democracies, and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) would allow propaganda by authoritarian forces to be generated and distributed at an unprecedented rate.

“They progressively promote the narrative that democracy has faltered and is inefficient, therefore, the less democratic option will be adopted,” she said on Wednesday, in her opening speech at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress.

Lauded as the top democracy in Asia, Taiwan has faced increasing military pressures from China as its relations grow closer to the United States. Beijing has started to launch military exercises near the island since then-US house speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei in 2022.

The military drills continued in April after Tsai met US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California.  

Keep reading

The post ‘Rise of AI’ may fuel disinformation, threaten democracy first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by OpenAI, provides many new opportunities, yet concerns have been raised over copyright issues as it seems unclear who owns the generated content: the users, tech companies or data owners?

ChatGPT generates search results based on the data available on the Internet and the data users input in the conversation. Generative AI uses sources of data to generate responses without the owners’ approval, therefore, potentially causing copyright issues.

At a forum at Sunway Phnom Penh Hotel on Monday, via online presentation, Poren Chiang, a Taiwanese digital law researcher, alerted the public of the threat generative AI poses to copyright law.

Keep reading

The post Generative AI: A Threat to Copyright? first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

Atmo, an AI weather forecast system, has set its sights on the Asia-Pacific region to help improve the lives of citizens, said CEO Alexander Levy in an interview during the COP27 climate summit in Egypt last November.

Levy said during the interview that the Asia-Pacific region is “a vulnerable place” due to the massive population and vulnerability to extreme weather conditions. 

The remarks come at a time when the World Meteorological Organization estimated that Asia suffered nearly USD 36 billion in economic losses due to extreme weather events in 2021 alone, with nearly 50 million people affected, Nikkei reports.

The CEO also stated his belief that AI forecasting is the way of the future, as machines are able to continuously learn, helping them make more precise predictions about weather patterns that deviate from the norm.

Keep reading

The post AI Weather Forecast Startup Sets Sights On Asia-Pacific Region first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

With the publication of the ASEAN Digital Masterplan 2025 (ADM 2025), member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have endeavored to promote the digitalization of the region. In this digital transformation process, data is essential because every interaction in the digital world produces and relies on data.

Realizing the significance of data, Southeast Asian countries have intensified their efforts to develop their own data governance strategies. For instance, Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia have enacted comprehensive data protection legislation. Vietnam is also aiming to unveil its full data privacy law by 2024.

Keep reading

The post Southeast Asia’s Data Localization Push is a Double-Edged Sword first appeared on Open Development Mekong.