US-China AI Competition: Southeast Asia Will Need to Strike a Balance
Ryan Hass
As China and the US intensify competition in the AI domain, Southeast Asia countries will find themselves in the same old dilemma of “not choosing sides”.

Ryan Hass
As China and the US intensify competition in the AI domain, Southeast Asia countries will find themselves in the same old dilemma of “not choosing sides”.
Tham Siew Yean
Malaysia must urgently pursue AI chip supply diversification and supply chain vigilance to mitigate the detriments of potential export curbs and tariff hikes.
Brandon Tan Jun Wen
Governments are turning to generative AI to assist in public communications, sparking backlash from the public over the quality and intent of such visuals. A better approach would be to pair GenAI with human expertise.
Surachanee Sriyai
Social media depend largely on English-language models to train their AI content moderation models. This has become a problem.
Indira Zahra Aridati
Indira Zahra Aridati argues that although AI offers positive benefits for Southeast Asia’s climate battle, the region should not look at its usage through rose-tinted glasses. Without careful consideration, such systems may inadvertently undermine and be counterintuitive to the very climate goals that they aim to achieve.
Nuurrianti Jalli
Recent incidents involving AI-generated depictions of the Malaysian national flag underscore the need for capacity building to instil AI literacy.
Pieter E. Stek
China has led the way in providing 'open weight' large language models (LLMs) such as DeepSeek-R1. This means that governments and companies in Southeast Asia can access them more easily and cheaply.
Jose Miguelito Enriquez
While acknowledging the importance of establishing a framework for AI governance, the Philippine government has not enacted relevant laws or introduced regulatory policies through executive action.
Vinod Thomas
Artificial intelligence can help resolve climate change problems, but only if the massive energy consumed by data centres comes from green sources.
Nuurrianti Jalli|Angel Martinez
AI-generated propaganda is being used to distort reality and disinform the public, even gathering support for military escalation in already troubled waters.