The AI bubble is a distraction

A trip to Vietnam reminded me that there’s much to do outside of AI. [Read from your browser]( Editor's letter  --------------------------------------------------------------- Hello {NAME} On a recent trip to Vietnam for our first-ever Saigon Summit, I visited an eatery in Ho Chi Minh City and tested GPT-4o by taking a photo of my receipt and translating it via the AI. It did a decent job, but if I had tried it a few minutes earlier, it might not have worked. That’s because my mobile connection, which I had bought as part of a data roaming plan, was spotty. In hindsight, my Vietnam trip was a wake up call. Even as we witness the expanding AI bubble - and the footage of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang signing his name on a woman’s bra is an indication of that - I’m reminded that plenty of opportunities exist outside of it. On the topic of connectivity, using the latest and greatest proprietary large language models (LLMs) is impossible without fast and reliable internet access. In many parts of the world, getting a basic connection remains problematic - an issue that Elon Musk’s satellite internet company Starlink hopes to solve. It launched in Indonesia to much fanfare, but our [subscriber-only analysis]( details the company’s challenges in the country. On a related note, while eSIMs can’t solve connection issues in remote areas, they [could be a goldmine]( for the next generation of startups. Airalo is perhaps the most prominent Southeast Asian startup in this space, but our article mentions other up-and-coming players. As we scan the region, we see that other sectors are heating up, too. For instance, it’s hard to imagine the coffee industry in Singapore as a blue ocean. But that’s the case in Indonesia as its [coffee boom enters a new phase, thanks to affordable brews](. Indonesia’s electric vehicle industry is also thriving: The country is seeking to surpass automotive powerhouse Thailand as the [electric “Detroit of Southeast Asia.”]( Meanwhile, our Saigon Summit has shown that [Vietnam remains a land of opportunities](. Though an attendee joked that the event was a group therapy session for VCs, fintech remains vibrant and agritech as well as business process automation remain untapped. “We’ve talked about AI and all the cool stuff, but we’re still a paper-based economy. Everything we do is recorded on paper,” explained Niraan de Silva, CEO of Vietnamese fintech unicorn VNLife. AI can’t take off in a country that isn’t digitalized, he added. Of course, AI can’t be ignored, and Tech in Asia has in fact grown its coverage of the topic by [launching a dedicated newsletter]( for it. But as journalists, our job is also to uncover important stories that are being missed. We’re not just pursuing clicks by going after whatever’s hot at the moment. Le Hong Minh, founder and CEO of Vietnam-based gaming giant VNG, said something memorable at his fireside chat during the Saigon Summit: He has to strike a balance between chasing after shiny new things and building on the foundation that his business has laid over the years. This is a timely reminder: With all the talk about foundation models (the technology that LLMs are based on), let’s not forget our real foundations, whatever they are. Regards, Terence Lee Editor-in-Chief  --------------------------------------------------------------- [ADVERTISE]( | [SUBSCRIBE]( | [HIRE]( | [FIND JOBS]( P.S. Don't miss out on the biggest tech news and analysis. Add newsletter@techinasia.com to your address book, contacts, or safe sender list. Or simply move us into your inbox. Tech in Asia thanks our partners for supporting our newsletters. Sponsorship has no influence on editorial content. Too many emails? Switch to a different frequency or get new content through our [preference center]( or [unsubscribe](. You can also break our hearts and remove yourself from all Tech in Asia emails over [here](  --------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2024 Tech in Asia, All rights reserved. 13A Neil Rd, Singapore 088810 A member of The Business Times.