Tomorrow CEO Mike Walsh speaks at the ‘How to build an AI-powered civilisation’ session at the Malaysian Digital Xceleration Summit 2024. (Photos by Low Yen Yeing/The Edge)

KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 25): The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated technological advancements beyond expectations, with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) leading to what Mike Walsh — CEO of British tech advisory firm Tomorrow — termed the start of a fifth industrial revolution.

This follows the fourth revolution that brought the internet, smartphones and the Internet of Things. Currently, this fifth revolution is in its early years, as Walsh noted bigger opportunities for leaders to shape the future.

“The biggest risk we face is not being ambitious enough,” said Walsh in his talk “How to build an AI-powered civilisation” at the Malaysian Digital Xceleration Summit 2024, where he envisioned the business world in the next 10 years.

He likened this potential for AI to the invention of the electric dynamo, where for the first 34 years all it was used for was as a replacement to the steam engine in factories until Henry Ford did something different — by using it to create the first moving assembly line.

Walsh posed the question of what it meant to live in an AI-powered world, using AI in radically new ways like Ford with the dynamo. Today, most people associate AI with chatbots like ChatGPT, but that is only a fraction of it, and AI is already being used to automate in new ways.

“South Korea is the most automated country on the planet. Today, they have more robots per capita than anywhere else in the world… today, one out of 10 of all workers in South Korea is already a robot,” said Walsh.

The city of Busan has automated ports where robots automatically unload cargo. Office buildings have been retrofitted with facial recognition to automate security while robots in carparks autonomously move cars to open parking bays.

“I believe that the most successful organisations and countries in the next 10 years will be those that leverage AI not to be cheaper or to work with fewer people or be a little bit more efficient, but by leveraging the fundamental experience for their customers, co-workers and for their citizens,” said Walsh.

He stated that Malaysia has the potential to reimagine how organisations work in this future, but this would require agile leadership open to change. He suggested reaching out to the next generation who truly appreciates the technology and can challenge businesses if their transformative ideas are big and fast enough to keep up with the technology.

“This is the time to build a new AI-powered civilisation; don't underestimate how different 2035 will be. When you think about it, in 10 years' time, it would have been 28 years after the first iPhone… 2035 is going to be an AI-powered world in which the real and the virtual are forever intertwined. How do you prepare for a world like that?” said Walsh.

Traversing the metaverse

(From left) PlayStation Studios Malaysia head Hasnul Hadi Samsudin, Ammobox Studios CEO Jeremy Choo, VirtualTech Frontier CEO Jason Low and Gravity Ventures CEO Jessy Kim.

Continuing the summit’s objective of covering digital twins, the panel “Metaverse: The Utopian Work, Live, Play Experience” discussed the current landscape surrounding society’s interaction with the metaverse.

Ammobox Studios CEO Jeremy Choo compared the first exposure of the internet from people born before and after the 2000s. He said that those born before then may have had their first contact with the internet in the form of work activities such as emails or bulletins, but for the newer generation, that exposure would have come in the form of games or digital experiences.

To illustrate this paradigm shift, Choo gave an example: “In our time, why would you want to experience a concert through the computer? It just makes no sense, but yet, here we are. We have Fortnite running Travis Scott's concert with tens and twenties of millions of concurrent viewers.”

Expanding on Choo’s views, VirtualTech Frontier CEO Jason Low agreed that gaming is currently the most popular gateway for the metaverse, with Roblox and Fortnite being some of the biggest games among the younger generation.

Low also noted that it is not just about the games that the younger generation can play on Roblox, but the social space that they have invested in and created for themselves. This occupied online space possesses many similarities to the metaverse.

“You're really talking about true economical values that this kind of virtual world actually gives to these children… They are still [logging in] everyday, they're spending more time in [the digital world],” he said

The panellists also talked about how the use cases of the metaverse can go beyond gaming and even touch other industries like education and marketing to make it easier for consumption of information.

Jesse Kim, CEO of South Korea-based Gravity Ventures, shared some comparisons regarding the metaverse landscape as a contrast to Malaysia.

South Korea has invested some US$1.5 billion (RM6.5 billion) in the cloud and metaverse space, using the metaverse for tertiary education. However, despite having a ministry of science and ICT, she pointed out that South Korea does not have an organisation like MDEC that can specifically provide support for metaverse companies. Kim said she was impressed with the IP360 initiative that provides grants for metaverse adoption.

A future of tech in the cloud

(From left) MDEC digital industry acceleration head Wan Murdani Wan Mohamad, Equinix senior director of global technical sales for South Asia Simon Lockington, Oracle Malaysia managing director Fitri Abdullah and Microsoft Malaysia managing director Laurence Si.

The summit concluded with the panel “Next Gen Computing: Unleashing the Power of Intelligent System”, which dove into advancements of the hardware and software of computation itself, with a focus on serverless computing, along with its impact on local businesses.

Simon Lockington, senior director of global technical sales for South Asia at Equinix, said that more than 90% of internet traffic goes through Equinix’s servers, giving them a good perspective over where development is headed.

He noted that more businesses are headed towards the cloud, which over time has these groups thinking of moving towards a serverless environment to make the most out of the cloud.

Serverless computing is where cloud models provide machines the resources needed, enabling users to build and run applications without needing to manage a server or have any prior infrastructure.

“If you scan the current landscape, 90% of all new [research and development] will be on the cloud, all gen (generative) AI will only be available on the cloud. Another [thing] to note is according to analysis, 70% of work is still done on premises; [there is] still a lot of room for customers to adopt the cloud,” said Fitri Abdullah, managing director of Oracle Malaysia.

Fitri added that through increased usage of gen AI, which relies on specialised graphics processing units, the cloud could be more popular if it allows for simpler gen AI integration than doing it on premises.

Lockington noted that given Singapore is home to the largest Equinix internet exchange in the world, with the right resources and skilled workforce, being so close to the busiest internet highways gives Malaysia a good chance to achieve its goal as a regional digital hub and that it is up to Malaysia to capitalise on this.