Singapore has ranked top for overall AI readiness with 70.1 out of 100, ahead of 11 other APAC economies by the Salesforce 2023 Asia Pacific AI Readiness Index.
The nation’s overall score has improved considerably since the last report in 2021, where it also ranked first with 65.6. In the 2023 Index results, Japan and China ranked second and third, with 59.8 and 59.7 respectively. While Singapore scored highest in the rankings, a considerable number of nations in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam), scored comfortably below the Asia Pacific average.
The results come from the third edition of the bi-annual Index, which assesses a range of AI readiness measures and their impact on social and economic opportunities across fifteen various statistical indicators. The Index presents an interesting set of overall results; it reveals a growing divide between emerging and mature digital economies, as well as their readiness and ability for AI adoption.
AI is a growing driver of data center demand in the region, with readiness indicating potential growth for nations across APAC. The speed and rollout of generative AI (artificial intelligence capable of creating text, images, and other media) will be considerably affected by a country’s AI readiness. A nation’s “readiness” is measured in part by infrastructure, data, workforce development, ethical design and integration.
AI requires large scale technology resources and specialized infrastructure, large volumes of training data, field expertise, the ability to handle and manage biased content and the integration of AI models into real-world scenarios and applications.
The results revealed that Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Singapore and Thailand all noticed their overall AI readiness increase from the previous Index results. South Korea leads the ranks in terms of creative outputs, while India takes the lead in terms of the number of AI start-ups.