Artificial Intelligence (AI) Readiness Index for ASEAN and Selected East Asia Countries

Nowadays, the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) into our lives has become indispensable.

The groundwork for artificial intelligence was established many decades prior, through Vannevar Bush with his seminal work (As We May Think, 1945), continued by Alan Turing (Computing Machinery and Intelligence, 1950). After that, the term Artificial Intelligence was coined for the first time by John McCarty and Marvin Minsky in 1956. Starting from that point, discussion about AI did not get too much spotlightuntil certain notable events occurred, such as Deep Blue beating the world chess champion from Russia, Garry Kasparov. On other occasions, Watsons, a supercomputer developed by IBM, managed to beat the two best players of Jeopardy, a reality TV show, by a large margin.  that has catapulted AI to the mainstream media.

AI plays either a marginal or significant role in our daily life activities (depending on the individual). A simple song recommendation from Spotify while listening while driving to your favourite music genre, or using Google Maps while walking or driving in a non-familiar place, represents some instances of how ‘weak’ AI is used in our daily lives. Recently, with the introduction of ChatGPT 5-4 version by OpenAI (as April 2026), Claude by Anthropic, Llama 2 by Meta, Mistral 7B by Mistral; Ernie 4.0 by Baidu; and others, menial tasks such as drafting an email, a letter, creating coding for a computer program and other office tasks can be completed by mere minutes or even seconds using either one of these large language model (LLM). While this may appear to be insignificant, this can be seen as a first step to pave the way towards AI readiness among individuals, society, government, and the country as a whole in the years to come.

With the integration of artificial intelligence into nearly every aspect of human existence, trust perhaps was the most appropriate word to describe our readiness to embrace AI in our daily lives.

Trust is an abstract concept, and it is perceived differently, not to mention trust towards programs, machines, or, in this case, AI.

In this article, the authors establish a correlation between the construct of trust and the preparedness to utilize artificial intelligence within ASEAN and selected Asian nations (notably Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and ultimately, China) to assess their respective levels of readiness to integrate AI into governmental frameworks. This readiness index was developed by Oxford Insight, a company based in the UK that provides a readiness ranking among all countries in the world from 2019 to 2025. It is imperative to acknowledge that, in terms of credibility, this classification may serve as the most reliable indicator of nations’ preparedness to integrate artificial intelligence within their governmental frameworks. It is the authors’ intention to provide a comprehensive depiction or overview of the prevailing state of artificial intelligence within the ASEAN region.

Based on the AI Index Report 2024 released by Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), upon examining the annual publication of national strategies about artificial intelligence by various nations, it is noteworthy that among the ASEAN region and the selected Asian countries, China was the first to release it AI national strategies in 2017, followed by Singapore and Japan in 2019; Indonesia and South Korea in 2020; Malaysia, Philippines, and Vietnam in 2021 and lastly Thailand in 2022. The earlier a particular country initiates its AI national strategies, the better its foothold in this area will be in the future (nonetheless, it also depends on the economic strength capabilities, human talent, the inflow of foreign investment, and other factors in that particular country). For instance, China initiated its national policy about artificial intelligence in the year 2017, preceding all member states of the ASEAN. However, in terms of yearly and average ranking per year (by Oxford Insight), it is still behind Singapore, South Korea, and Japan. It is evident that as of the present year, numerous ASEAN countries such as Timor Leste, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Brunei Darussalam have not initiated their AI national policy.

Figure 1 shows the Government AI Readiness Among the ASEAN and selected East Asia countries, as aggregated annually by Oxford Insight over a span of seven years, commencing from 2019 up until 2025. The primary objective of this index is to examine the readiness of a government in certain countries to implement AI in delivering public services for their citizens. This index investigated 195 countries in 2025, 188 countries in 2024, 193 countries in 2023, 181 countries in 2022, 160 countries in 2021, 172 countries in 2020, and 194 countries in 2019. In total, an average of 180 countries have been included in the index yearly. For this index, member states of the ASEAN alongside a selected number of East Asian nations, specifically Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and China were identified. Several notable countries in East Asia were identified due to their reputation as the so-called Asian Tigers (high-growth economies country) with the addition of Japan and China. This serves as a good comparison due to their geographical closeness and cultural similarities, which are not significantly different compared to the ASEAN region.

This index intends to measure the government’s AI readiness in these countries. This is accomplished through the assessment of the three (3) key pillars, i.e., i) government, ii) technology sectors, and lastly, iii) data and infrastructure. The analysis involved 160 countries (the lowest participation) and up to 193 countries (the highest participation), and it was performed using the combination of the index scores and complementary desk research and analysis.

Figure 1 shows there are 11 ASEAN nations (with the addition of Timor Leste or East Timor, which newly joined ASEAN in May 2024 after becoming an observer country in 2022). The same figure shows the ranking (for the past seven years) for every ASEAN country, plus the selected East Asia countries as listed. The extent to which the government in the specified nation is prepared to adopt artificial intelligence is indicated by the height of the bar; a shorter bar signifies a more favorable ranking and greater preparedness to integrate AI into governmental operations in the foreseeable future.

Singapore consistently demonstrated exceptional performance, constantly in the 2nd position over several years (from 2021 until last year); notably, even in the 2019 ranking, Singapore outperformed the USA (4th place), Germany (3rd place), and the UK (2nd place) for the countries’ readiness using AI. The worst Singapore performed in the ranking was in 2025, ranking 7th out of 195 countries. With the national investment totaling SG$1 billion in the next five (5) years, this will further enhance the AI capabilities and geared towards the implementation of National AI Strategy 2.0 which will significantly impact a lot of sectors and industries. For the foreign investment, Singapore was the “holy grail” for some big players in AI to invest for data centre expansion, (which is crucial to enable AI to operate) such as Equinix; Google, Microsoft, and Oracle. This expansion serves multi-purpose such as growing demand, investment expansion, vertical integration, and strengthening global presence.

Meanwhile, Malaysia could be regarded as the best country in AI readiness after Singapore, maintaining the two-digit figures and never placing in 30th place in the five-year ranking (except in 2025, when it dropped significantly to 38th place). Similar to other countries, Malaysia has implemented the AI Technology Action Plan, replacing the National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Roadmap for 2021-2025. This roadmap focuses on the five (5) national key priorities, namely: i) agriculture and forestry; ii) medical and healthcare; iii) smart cities and transportation; iv) education, and lastly, v) public service. Establishment of The National AI Office (NAIO) show the commitment to enhance Malaysia competitiveness, fostering sustainable growth and aim to make Malaysia as a regional AI leader.

At the same time, it is observable that countries like Thailand and Indonesia share third place behind Malaysia. It is important to highlight that these two nations exhibit comparable advancements in artificial intelligence, with Thailand being slightly better than Indonesia (based on the seven-year ranking, and only in the year 2021 did Indonesia overtake Thailand, while the rest of Thailand overtook Indonesia). Even Thailand and Indonesia lag behind the realm of AI; however, these two countries successfully attracted various investors for data centre expansion, such as BDx, Princeton Digital Group, and Singtel (for Indonesia), while Etix Everywhere and NTT have been expressing their intention to build data centre expansion in Thailand. 

The Philippines and Vietnam engaged in a rigorous competition for the fifth and sixth positions, with the Philippines overtaking Vietnam as evidenced in the 2022, 2020, 2019, 2025 rankings, while Vietnam only managed to surpass the Philippines three times, with 59th, 62nd, 43th in 2023, 2021 and 2024. It can be concluded that the AI readiness of both countries is still not aggressive compared to Singapore (as the benchmark in Asia region). Vietnam recently launched The National Strategy for AI Research, Development and Application Through 2030, with the aim to become top-4 ASEAN leaders in AI research and application by 2030. The Philippines, on the other hand, will be expected to launch the National AI Strategy Roadmap (NAISR 3.0) preceding the National AI Strategy Roadmap 2.0 by Centre for AI Research (CAIR) launched on 3 July 2024, by Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Philippines. However, in terms of foreign investment, Vietnam is another dark horse among ASEAN counterparts when it comes to attracting large players such as Amazon, Edge Centres, and GAW Capital Partners for the data centre expansion in this country. 

There is a stark difference in readiness for AI among ASEAN counterparts. For instance, most of the East Asia countries are quite advanced in terms of AI readiness compared to ASEAN countries (except Singapore), with Japan as the leading country, followed by South Korea, Taiwan, and lastly, China. Some of the ASEAN counterparts, such as Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Brunei, have a longer bar (shown in Figure 1), indicating that they are not fully prepared to embrace AI in their government system, let alone to have foreign investment come in. Nevertheless, this does not imply that they are excluded from this competition, as it is plausible that AI will have more potential to be discovered in the future.

The report exhibits the rankings of the ASEAN and selected South East Asia countries from the year 2019 until 2025. There were a few underlying reasons contributing for the differences in AI readiness and among countries in East Asia. First, readiness is linked with trust. Without trust, even the most advanced AI tools will fail to get traction. This implied that good governance will slowly build trust among the citizens. Later it developed among investors, regulatory institutions and others. Subsequently, it will take place among the citizens and the AI system itself. As this technology is still in the development and exploratory research phase, stakeholders and citizens particularly do not have enough trust, thus lowering the trust on AI scores in those particular countries. Secondly, readiness relates to policy making. In SEA, which almost more than half of the countries classified under lower middle-income countries, regulations and ethics of AI usage played a crucial driver for AI preparedness. Countries with mature, established AI policy (for example Singapore) ecosystem tend to generate higher institutional trust, that eventually will be reflected in their citizen trust.