Developing countries in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region are embracing generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) at a faster pace than their advanced counterparts, driven by young employees and students, a new survey by Deloitte found.
A 2024 study by Deloitte surveyed more than 11,900 individuals, including approximately 9,000 employees and 2,900 students in APAC, and found that gen AI is already transforming how people work in APAC, with younger generations leading the gen AI revolution. Across the region, 43% of employees and four in five university students reported using gen AI for work and study purposes.
The study highlighted that young people are more likely to be already experimenting with and using the technology. Employees aged 18 to 24 are nearly twice as likely to use gen AI compared to older workers, indicating that age and early exposure to digital technologies drive high gen AI usage.
Developing economies in APAC are leading gen AI adoption with rates about 30% higher than developed economies. Specifically, daily usage was found to be much higher in India (32% of those surveyed) and Southeast Asia (19%), compared to Australia (8%) and Japan (4%).
According to Deloitte, this adoption gap partially reflects the higher proportion of “digitally native” individuals in developing economies. In fact, 46% of those surveyed in India were between 18 and 35 years old, compared to 30% of those people surveyed in Japan.
Additionally, employees from developing economies were found to be more enthusiastically embracing gen AI. 53% of employees and students in developing economies expressed excitement about gen AI technology, compared to 23% of students and employees in developed economies. In comparison, 36% of employees in developed economies felt primarily uncertain about gen AI, compared to only 12% in developing economies.
The rise of gen AI
Businesses in APAC are actively experimenting and deploying gen AI. Deloitte expects some of the fastest growth in gen AI investment to occur in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, where gen AI usage is already high. The International Data Corporation shares this view, predicting that investments in gen AI in APAC will increase by 95.4% annually between 2022 and 2027, reaching US$26 billion.
Rising adoption of gen AI is also reflected in the surge of investments into startups in the sector. In 2023, more than US$25 billion was invested into gen AI startups, and 2024 is on track to reach new heights with US$18.8 billion raised in the first five months of the year, data from Dealroom show.
Unsurprisingly, the US leads in gen AI venture capital (VC) funding (US$53.6 billion), followed by Europe (US$6.1 billion) and Asia (US$4.7 billion).
Globally, there are over 400 gen AI startups, according to Dealroom and CB Insights, including notable ones from Asia. Gemsouls, based in China, is developing an AI platform for virtual characters, and has raised US$4 million in VC funding, according to CB Insights and Pitchbook. iNextLabs, based in Singapore, builds cutting-edge gen AI solutions tailored for diverse business needs, such as data analysis and content generation. Hypotenuse.ai, also based in Singapore, provides AI-driven writing and illustration tools and has raised about US$150,000. And Bitnal, from South Korea, specializes in gen AI-based automatic modeling and medical solutions.
Gen AI predictions
Looking ahead, gen AI innovation is expected to continue growing. Market intelligence platform CB Insights forecasts that 2024 will focus on sustainable AI operations, creating solutions that stick, addressing societal implications, and shifting cybersecurity paradigms.
In a report released earlier this year, CB Insights highlights the massive demand for high-power AI data centers amid increased AI adoption, the challenges with legacy data center infrastructure, and the growing need for cooling technologies and renewable energy to power these data-hungry operations. It also emphasizes the looming data scarcity issue and how companies are turning to synthetic data to train language models. These elements present opportunities for startups specializing in gen AI infrastructure.
The report also examines the rise of multimodal AI, where models can understand and respond across different data modalities like text, image, and video, unlocking new commercial opportunities. ArteraAI, for example, offers a prostate cancer test that analyzes both biopsy images and patients’ clinical data to predict patient outcomes. Google’s multimodal model PaLM-E targets robotics, combining visual and language with robotic sensory data. And Ghost Autonomy is incorporating multimodal LLMs into self-driving car applications.
The report also discusses the emergence of smaller, more efficient language models that are challenging the dominance of large, resource-intensive models. These models are expected to take over narrow tasks across finance, healthcare and law. Palmyra-Med, for example, is a model built by Writer specifically to meet the needs of the healthcare industry, and Arcee has developed specialized language models for the legal, medical and finance domains.
The CB Insights report also explores the massive productivity gains seen in white-collar work from gen AI tools that automate tedious tasks, which McKinsey and Company estimates could add the equivalent of US$2.6 trillion to US$4.4 trillion in annual value to the global economy.
Finally, it highlights the rise of AI-powered cyberattacks, with deepfakes and email phishing attacks increasing substantially. CheckPoint reports that global average weekly cyberattacks per organization hit an all-time peak of 1,258 in Q2 2023. Sumsub’s 2023 Identity Fraud Report reveals a tenfold increase in the number of deepfakes detected globally from 2022 to 2023, with the crypto and fintech sectors accounting for 96% of these cases. In the fintech space alone, deepfake incidents rose by 700% in 2023 compared to the previous year.
Featured image credit: edited from freepik
