Malaysia has substantial AI potential.
According to the Tortoise Global AI Index, Malaysia ranks second in the whole of Southeast Asia when it comes to potential for AI. Malaysia performs particularly well on the operating environment for AI — which includes factors like regulatory readiness and public support — ranking among the top 25 countries in the Global AI Index. Malaysia’s multilingual population, clear Government ambition, open data platforms and growing access to computing infrastructure make it an ideal testbed for AI development and deployment.22
Tortoise AI Global Index: Scores for Malaysia by pillar.
Scores in each pillar are out of 100. For context, where Malaysia scores 24/100 on Government Strategy, Singapore scores 59 and Indonesia scores 19.
How organisations can best take advantage of AI.
1
The easiest early win is to encourage greater adoption among your own workforce. Much of the potential from AI does not need any special scaffolding, custom datasets or fine tuning, but can be unlocked by taking greater advantage of the tools that already exist. As a start, review who in your organisation is and is not already using AI tools.
2
Give your workforce permission to prompt. Set out clear recommendations for where it is acceptable to use AI tools, taking into account any particular reliability, policy or ethical factors that are unique to your organisation. Compile a list of clear exemplar use cases to demonstrate to your workforce practical ways AI can help them.
3
Complete an initial audit of your proprietary data and processes, and how they can be better integrated with AI. Where gaps exist, consider how you can fill these over the next few years, prioritising areas which are likely to have the biggest impact on the most significant drivers for your business.
4
Choose an initial high priority area to prototype new AI workflows. This can act as an exemplar to help you build, understand and iterate what new types of process you’ll need, any technical skills gaps to fill and what realistic gains are likely to be. Demonstrating early wins can help build confidence among the wider organisation.
5
Keep your workforce part of the conversation. In order to reduce concerns, ensure your workforce feeds into your strategy about how AI will change job roles going forward – and what formal programmes to learn new skills are likely to be needed to help with the transition. AI should be seen as a way to make people’s jobs better, not remove them.
of enterprises globally using gen AI are already seeing a return on investment (ROI).23
Slow AI adoption could reduce the potential benefits from AI.
In our polling, we found that the majority of current AI use was coming “bottom up” from earlier adopters, but that usage was significantly lower among older workers and those without a university degree. The most significant barrier we found why older workers were less likely to use AI is a lack of clarity around use cases for AI.
On current trends, 19 million people could miss out on the benefits of AI, and
(USD 60 billion) in additional economic value may go unrealised.
Top 5 barriers to greater AI adoption for people aged 55+
Under 35 yr olds scores for same barriers listed for comparison.
Concerns around data privacy and security are acting as a barrier to greater usage.
In our polling, 48% of people said the main barrier to using AI tools more was concerns about data privacy and security, followed by a lack of technical skills to use AI tools (35%).
84% of people in Malaysia agree that AI needs to be developed responsibly, with 43% expressing a worry about risks from misinformation, 35% worried about the impact it will have on online safety, and 83% expressing a desire to protect individual creators from the effects of AI.
Making the most of AI will need greater upskilling.
To fully take advantage of AI’s potential, we estimate that Malaysia will need an additional 11 million workers with basic AI skills, such as the ability to use chatbots fluently at work; 3.7 million with intermediate skills, which fall between basic usage and professional-level development; and 830,000 with advanced AI skills, on par with professional IT developers.
of workers said they wanted to better understand how AI models worked.
would like to know more practical use cases of how to use AI.
how they can best prompt AI models to get the most of them.
Enhancing Malaysia’s energy supply will also be needed to facilitate greater AI adoption.
Given Malaysia’s ongoing data centre boom, energy demand is projected to be more than seven times higher in 2030 than in 2024 — rising from 9TWh to 68TWh and accounting for around 30 percent of total national energy consumption.
AI itself can be part of the solution. By improving forecasting for renewable energy and enabling a smarter, more responsive grid, AI could help optimise energy efficiency by up to 8 percent — helping to ease some of the pressure from rising demand.
To maximise the benefits of AI, Malaysia will need to grow its clean energy supply. We estimate that meeting increased demand from AI adoption alone could require 51 percent more low- and zero-carbon energy capacity by 2030.