Anthony Annunziata, IBM's director of AI Open Innovation, announces new members of the AI Alliance at the AISC 2025. (Photo: S-World)

Bao Tram: Thank you, Mr. Annunziata, for granting VOV24/7 this interview.

Anthony Annunziata: The first thing, thank you very much for having me here. It's a pleasure. I'm really excited to be part of the conference and to talk to you about this.

Bao Tram: How do you perceive Vietnam's role in the AI Alliance?

Anthony Annunziata: I think that Vietnam in the Alliance will have a leading role in the development of open-source AI and technologies from it. Vietnam has a number of very important trends that are a really good fit to what's happening across the globe in open AI – there's an energy, there's a focus, there's a balance between wanting to work across and taking advantage of what's happening in the broader world in large language models and infrastructure technologies and so on. But to apply it and to ensure that the local context, local language, culture, business, and economic interests are taken into scope and are in our priorities, I think that balance will create a really strong platform for Vietnam. We are welcoming a number of new members from Vietnam and launching our regional chapter here. FPT Software has been a founding member of the Alliance from the beginning and it has had a very strong role in the program.

Bao Tram: How will Vietnam's participation in the AI Alliance affect R&D initiatives in the region, particularly in areas like AI and semiconductor technology research?

Anthony Annunziata: AI is starting to play a very significant role in the semiconductor industry at the process level, which is always a huge challenge, and at the chip design level which is another huge challenge. I think Vietnam has a lot of opportunities here to bring these worlds together, to be a leader, and it will foster a lot of, not just very important research directions, but commercial directions as well.

Representatives of Vietnam's new members (Photo: S-World)

Bao Tram: How will Vietnam's participation in the AI Alliance encourage  other developing countries in the AI field?

Anthony Annunziata: Open-source is very much about creating a common foundation that many people and organizations and countries can build on. But I think, in particular, in the case of Vietnam, the country is very well set up to take advantage of this and to adapt technologies based on open source to the local context, local economy, skills, needs, but it's also set up, especially with the participation of new member companies, with government policy, with the general culture to showcase how that can be very successful. I think if that model will be successful, it can be something that many other places could emulate.

Bao Tram: How do you rate Vietnam's regulatory framework for AI development?

Anthony Annunziata: As I see it, the regulatory approach seems very much focused on removing barriers and creating the ingredients for success – skills, technology, infrastructure investment, the ability for businesses to experiment, and to do so freely, and to do so with support from the government. I think these approaches are very important, very encouraging. I think it fits right in, too. While there's a diversity of approaches across the world to regulating AI, I think this approach, to focus on enabling and figuring out how to move quickly and take advantage of the technology responsibly, so balancing innovation speed with safeguards, I think it's well aligned with the best of global approaches.

Bao Tram: As a representative for IBM, what market opportunities do you see for your company in Vietnam's AI sector?

Anthony Annunziata: First, I want to underline that IBM is a company committed to open-source as the basis for everything we do in AI. So, the open-source nature of the Alliance, the open-source nature of our work in Vietnam, it's right in our business model. The second important point is we always aspire to be a partner to businesses, to countries, to governments, and our role of partner is bringing our technology, our products and service to your goals. So, the local contexts, challenges, and opportunities in Vietnam, whether it be with a bank or whether it be with a startup, are absolutely things that we want to support, and by leveraging open source and our products that are built on it, which are designed to support other applications and business needs, I think there's a big opportunity for us here.

Bao Tram: Thank you, Anthony Annunziata, IBM's director of AI Open Innovation, for granting VOV24/7 this interview.

Anthony Annunziata: Thank you very much for having me. It's really a pleasure to be here and I'd love to talk again.