M'sia aims to develop national policy on AI, says minister

Communications and Multimedia Minister Gobind Singh Deo said the government is looking at developing a national policy on Artificial Intelligence (AI) to meet new challenges linked to the use of data.

Speaking to reporters at the third annual NextBigTechAsia Conference in Kuala Lumpur, he said this was in line with the development of technologies that are dependent on data.

"As I said earlier when you look at how technology is developing, in future a lot of things will depend on data.

"How you analyse data, how you store data, and AI is a critical element of that," Gobind said.

"My ministry is looking at formulating policies that will deal with those aspects," he added.

In July, Malaysia Digital Economy Corp (Mdec) chief executive officer Surina Shukri said the agency is establishing an AI unit to support the setting up of the National AI Framework, targeted for completion by end of this year.

Gobind, however, said no timeline have been set to come up with a national policy to complement the framework.

"Suffice to say agencies like Mdec, they have a timeline for the framework, which is fine.

"But after that, we will have to sit together and discuss how we can put forward a paper which suggests to the government policies in respect of data and AI," he said.

Earlier in his speech, Gobind highlighted how Malaysia will require "talent, trust and ethics" to develop a proper AI and data ecosystem that would place it in a position to benefit from an increasingly digitalised economy.

Among others, he cited ongoing tech courses offered by public and private universities to produce talents in AI development, the need for privacy solutions to enable better data integration and the ethical aspect of using AI technologies.

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