Meta’s President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg speaks to the press during the tech conference Innovate Vietnam 2024 in Hanoi on October 1, 2024. (Photo: VietGate)

What do you think of Vietnam’s digital transformation and innovation process?

I think Vietnam has the clear potential to be a regional powerhouse in terms of the digital economy and the development of artificial intelligence in this whole part of the world in Southeast Asia because of the very well-educated, young, entrepreneurial population you have and because of the way that I can see so many millions of people in Vietnam already using Facebook and Messenger, not just to communicate with family and friends, but to build businesses and to communicate with businesses as well. So, it's already a technology which is being used for such creative and entrepreneurial purposes and that is only going to accelerate in the future.

What is your assessment of Vietnam’s digital economy compared to other countries in the region?

I think, compared to other countries in this part of the world, in this hemisphere, I would say Vietnam is one of the leading countries for all the reasons that I've already described – this combination of young demographic, high levels of education, and a very versatile use of digital tools. And I think one of the reasons why I announced that we’re developing an AI literacy curriculum and course which will be offered to students at the Vietnam National University from January next year, is precisely because of the question you raised, and indeed the earlier question asked, which is you can only use AI if you understand it, and you can only understand it if you have the right training and education.

To that end what has Meta done to support Vietnam’s digital transformation?

We have very ambitious plans here in Vietnam, particularly in three areas. Firstly, we’ll be manufacturing our latest cutting-edge metaverse headsets, called the Quest 3S model, which Mark Zuckerberg unveiled last week. We’ll be manufacturing them right here in Vietnam. That will itself create well over a thousand new jobs. Secondly, we’ll be making, over the next month, Meta AI – the world's most popular conversational AI agent – available to everybody in Vietnam – on Instagram, on Facebook, on Messenger, on WhatsApp. And thirdly, we’ll be making available, over the next few months, to two businesses in Vietnam that use Messenger to communicate with customers, new AI tools so they can communicate with their customers using AI.

How AI solutions can help Vietnam?

Well, AI is used in so many different ways. It's used to help health diagnostics. It's used to help predict and mitigate climate change. It's used to help farmers get larger yields from their crops. It's used to personalise education for children. AI isn't one thing. It’s going to infuse everything that we do in the online world. And I'm very confident, not least through the partnership that we have entered into with the Vietnam National University to introduce a new AI literacy curriculum that will teach more and more engineers and more and more students how to use AI for their own purposes and their own entrepreneurial ideas in Vietnam in the years ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Nick Clegg, Meta’s Global Affairs President, for sharing Meta’s investment expansion in Vietnam, especially the manufacturing sector.