A recent article about Southeast Asia from the World Economic Forum (WEF) listed the top five perceived risks in the region. While the top three risks are the same as in other regions across the globe, the fourth and fifth are different.
Importantly, when it comes to adverse outcomes of Artificial Intelligence technology, the business leaders and senior executives who participated in the World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey 2025, Southeast Asia placed six ranks higher than the global ranking.
The top three perceived risks around the world are, in order, economic downturn (e.g., recession, stagnation); lack of economic opportunity or unemployment; and Inflation.
Interestingly, the fifth perceived risk in Southeast Asia identified by business leaders is disruptions to a systemically important supply chain, ten ranks higher than in the rest of the world.
AI in SEA
The article acknowledged that while the AI boom in Southeast Asia has brought about myriad opportunities, it has also caused fault lines to widen.
According to the survey, executives across the globe rank the risks from AI in 10th place, but those in Southeast Asia ranked them in fourth place. Weforum also noted the “relatively higher concern about online harms and the risks posed by frontier technologies more broadly” in the region.
This comes even as AI is making headway across different nations in the region, including key cloud and AI investment programmes from Microsoft in Indonesia and Malaysia. While Singapore has its Green Data Centre Roadmap, Vietnam, meanwhile, has an AI research and development centre from Qualcomm.
The report warned of the high power demand of data centres in a region where grids are still based on fossil fuels. This is likely to give rise to exponentially greater emissions, at least in Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
Moreover, while a little less than half of the firms in the region are beginning to scale AI, this is not the case for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), where most workers are employed. The report noted that in Singapore, which is the most digitally advanced in the region, adoption is just at 15%.
“If large companies capture most of the productivity gains while workers across the labour market face job losses, AI could increase inequality, especially when unemployment ranks second among perceived risks in the survey,” the report warned.
Furthermore, it pointed out that AI could affect as many as 164 million employees, with mostly women and younger workers apt to be the most affected.
Other institutions have said the same. The Brookings Institution pointed out last year that “Southeast Asia faces significant disparities in AI readiness, governance capacity, and technical expertise,” and added that “uneven institutional capacity and fragmented governance frameworks increase exposure to AI-related risks.” /TISG
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