AI and job transformation in Malaysia: What's next?

 

Experts share that the impact of AI may be more nuanced than just simply replacing people at work. — This visual is human-created, AI-aided

In a discussion on an online forum, a freelance translator in Malaysia believes that he has fewer job opportunities now due to clients turning to AI.

Another individual in the same discussion claims that he was laid off due to his stance against using AI tools in the company.

In a separate conversation, a designer questioned whether he should resign as a sign of protest against his company’s increasing reliance on AI to generate content. Meanwhile, another user who handles accounting tasks at work says AI is taking over his role after the company adopted a new AI-powered processing system. He claims that the system has led to some colleagues being laid off and those who remain will be required to verify the work performed by AI.

In the comments section, other users have advised him to look for a new job elsewhere as he risks being replaced completely, or start showing more productivity in other aspects of his current work that cannot be done by AI.

These conversations found online reflect a growing concern among Malaysian workers as AI tools become a part of work.

Staying ahead

According to an Ipsos AI Monitor 2025 survey involving 500 Malaysian adults, 63% fear AI’s potential to replace their ­current job within the next three to five years.

“The fear of being replaced by AI is very real, and it’s completely valid,” says Edvance CEO Razin Rozman.

Fahad encourages employees to experiment with various generative AI tools to discover how they can boost productivity at work. — Randstad Malaysia

Randstad Malaysia country director Fahad Naeem says findings from his company’s Malaysia Employer Brand research, which surveyed 2,588 respondents, show that 5% now expect to lose their jobs due to AI.

“Despite this, the overall sentiment towards AI remains largely positive, as 48% of Malaysian workers said that AI has improved their job satisfaction this year,” adds Fahad.

According to NTT Data CEO Henrick Choo, the best way to navigate the fear of being replaced by AI is to embrace lifelong learning and adaptability. He says that he has seen employees transition from traditional support roles to newly-created positions in AI operations, product testing and customer success – often within just a few months.

“Focus on roles that rely on uniquely human skills like ­empathy, decision-making, ­critical thinking, and creativity which are areas where AI still lags behind,” says Choo in a statement to LifestyleTech.

His advice to individuals would be to start investing in digital ­fluency by learning to work alongside AI tools, adding that they should embrace continuous learning and stay updated on the latest tools, trends as well as ­governance practices.

“AI is not here to replace ­people, but to augment their capabilities. The most successful professionals will be those who understand how to leverage AI tools while asking the right ­questions about data ownership, ethical use, and value distribution,” adds Choo.

Razin shares that individuals who have successfully adapted to the rise of AI often share key qua­­lities such as adaptability, curiosity, and a mindset geared toward continuous learning. He also believes that basic AI literacy is becoming essential in the work place regardless of whether an employee is in a technical role.

Razin says those who have ­successfully adapted to the rise of AI usually have a mindset geared toward continuous learning. — Edvance

“We’ve seen many success stories, people who were once in roles like administrative support or basic data entry, who, through upskilling, moved into project management, digital marketing, or even junior AI operations roles.

“What helped them stand out was the learning itself and the mindset shift. They saw AI not as the end of their role, but the begin­­ning of a new one,” says Razin.

As for Fahad, he encourages employees to experiment with various generative AI tools to ­discover how they can boost ­productivity at work. He says exposure and experiences can help employees gain a deeper understanding of AI’s potential and limitations to anticipate how their roles might change.

“With the increasing integration of AI, talent should discuss with their managers how their career pathway may change. This involves identifying areas for deepening specialisation, mapping out training opportunities and having a pulse on how job responsibilities may evolve with increasing digital and AI disruption,” adds Fahad.

Fahad says the company’s 2025 Workmonitor report involving 503 res­­pon­­dents in Malaysia shows that 53% of talents trust their employers to invest and provide opportunities for continuous learning particularly in AI and technology. He adds that 56% of responders trust their ­employers to be transparent about business decisions that will impact their role.

“It is clear that while employers are excited about rolling out AI-powered tools and solutions, they should also be transparent and forthright about how AI will transform the company’s operations and processes, and more importantly, how it will impact the employees’ job security and career prospects,” says Fahad.

Redefining work roles

Experts share that the impact of AI may be more nuanced than just simply replacing people at work.

“Yes, we are definitely seeing AI reshape job functions in Malaysia though it’s less about outright replacement and more about redefinition,” says Choo.

Choo says the next five to 10 years will mark the rise of ‘hybrid intelligence’ where humans and AI collaborate as equal partners. — NTT Data

Razin shares a similar sentiment, where he says the company is also starting to see signs of generative AI changing the shape of the labour market in Malaysia.

“At this moment in time, we’re witnessing more of its impact on job transformation than full-on replacement,” he says.

Razin adds that repetitive or process-driven roles are being ­partially replaced or heavily ­supported by AI tools. He cites examples like some companies turning to AI to automate customer service by using chatbots or to perform document sorting or data entry.

According to Choo, Gen-AI ­powered chatbots and voicebots are now able to handle “up to 90% of fact-based customer ­service queries”, reducing the need for large call centre teams.

Razin adds that his company is also seeing ­changes in sectors like marketing, finance, education and tech services.

“These industries are adopting generative AI to speed up ­routine work, which means job scopes are evolving,” says Razin, adding that some local banks have ­started automating things like loan processing and ­compliance checks.

“So, rather than cutting jobs, they’re moving people into new roles that focus on oversight and analysis,” says Razin.

A 2024 national study by TalentCorp reveals that around 620,000 jobs – equivalent to 18% of formal sector roles in Malaysia – are expected to be significantly impacted by AI, digitalisation, and the green economy within the next three to five years.

The 72-page report highlights 14 roles including incident investigator, cloud administrator, and applications support engineer as among those on the High Impact list. It also listed 51 roles on the Medium Impact list such as IT audit manager, ­customer ­experience manager and data centre operations ­engineer.

In an article published by the World Economic Forum in June, Human Resources Minister Steven Sim highlights the report’s findings and says: “Workers ­currently in these roles require cross-skilling, upskilling or even reskilling.”

Why AI?

The machine may be better than people for specific tasks at work. Fahad says AI-based ­solutions are capable of ­processing large volumes of data and look at established ­patterns or past history to ­perform ­repetitive tasks. The key here, he says, is that AI is able to do so with better accuracy and consistency.

“These tools are highly applicable in tasks that require ­standardisation, speed, and scale. AI systems can also ­operate round-the-clock, which increases outcomes and greatly reduces time and cost,” Fahad adds.

According to an Ipsos AI Monitor 2025 survey involving 500 Malaysian adults, 63% fear AI’s potential to replace their ­current job within the next three to five years. — This visual is human-created, AI-aided

Choo explains that tasks that would normally take human teams days to do – such as fraud detection, code generation or content summarisation – can now be completed by AI in a shorter amount of time.

“Generative AI, in particular, is a strong performer when applied to structured domains: drafting documents, generating marketing visuals and videos, producing basic code, and ­summarising reports,” Choo says, adding that these tools operate best when provided with clear inputs and boundaries, making them highly viable in predictable scenarios.

Apart from processing huge volumes of data, Razin says advanced AI solutions are also capable of ­spotting trends across complex datasets and are ­capable of ­continuously learning through feedback loops.

What the future brings

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has made it known that Malaysia is committed towards becoming a leader in AI and digital transformation in the Asean region.

During the launch of the National AI Office last year, he emphasised that Malaysia must embrace the need for tech-­driven change.

“History has shown that industrial revolutions and ­technological advancements ­initially sparked anxiety but ­ultimately created more opportunities. This is why training and digital literacy are critical in equipping our workforce for these changes,” he said in his speech.

As for the challenges inherent in the use of AI, Anwar emphasised in an Aug 18 report by The Star that Malaysians have to face the hurdles head-on by emphasising humanistic ­values and critical thinking.

“We must not only focus on developing expertise but also on nurturing values,” he explains.

While Malaysia has made meaningful progress through frameworks like the National AI Roadmap and the Digital Economy Blueprint (MyDigital) with initiatives that reflect strong policy intent and direction, Razin says the pace of AI adoption in the workplace is outstripping both skills development and ­policy execution.

“One of the most urgent gaps is in talent. There’s growing demand for AI-literate professionals such as engineers, data scientists, prompt engineers, and ethics specialists, but education and training systems haven’t yet scaled to meet this demand.

“The workforce also lacks widespread access to affordable, high-quality upskilling pathways that align with the real-world applications of AI,” he adds.

Razin believes for Malaysia to truly thrive in the AI era – ­policies must be “adaptive, data-­informed, and shaped in collaboration with those building and using these tools daily”.

Choo says the next five to ten years will mark the rise of “hybrid intelligence” where humans and AI collaborate as equal partners. He believes new AI-driven roles that have emerged include AI assistant trainers (experts to finetune how AI behaves and communicates) and AI governance leads (to ­oversee bias, ethics and ­compliance).

“We see this across every ­function: marketers using GenAI to personalise outreach, analysts using AI to simulate future ­scenarios, and engineers working with AI to rapidly prototype ­innovations. The emphasis will shift from hard skills alone to cross-functional fluency; blending AI literacy with domain expertise,” adds Choo.

In Malaysia, Choo says AI transformation can also be seen in areas like healthtech, smart manufacturing and agritech where roles in digital twin ­modelling and data privacy are gaining traction.

“The future is not about who gets replaced, but who gets reimagined. With the right ­support, that can and should include everyone,” he concludes.-- By ANGELIN YEOH

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UN sounds alarm on scam expansion

Scam clampdown: A file photo showing a general view of Shwe Kokko city, a casino, entertainment and tourism complex, from Thailand’s side of the border. — Reuters

Cyber crime syndicates that run multi-billion-dollar scam operations across South-East Asia are still expanding despite recent law enforcement crackdowns, building links from Ireland to Mexico and reaching a potentially irreversible global spillover, the United Nations warned. 

The transnational criminal networks are infiltrating and scaling up in other parts of the world, particularly in the Pacific region, Africa, South America and South Asia, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in a report published on Monday.

They use trafficked workers from dozens of countries and are largely based in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.

The growth has been enabled by the rise of new, illicit online marketplaces, with such cryptocurrency-integrated platforms being used to launder money and connect illegal actors around the world, the agency said.

It noted that there are now “hundreds of large-scale scam operations conservatively generating tens of billions of dollars” in annual profits.

“The dispersal of these sophisticated criminal networks within areas of weakest governance has attracted new players, fuelled corruption, and enabled the industry to continue to scale,” the report said.

The spillover effect has seen criminal groups now “free to pick, choose, and move jurisdictions, operations, and value as needed, with the resulting situation rapidly outpacing the capacity of governments to contain it”.

Even as South-East Asian governments have stepped up crackdowns in recent months on scam compounds along shared land borders, the industrial-scale operations have simply adapted by moving to more remote locations within or beyond the region, or pivoting to online platforms. 

“Another adaptation that has been noted across the region is the shift from land-based Internet connection to Starlink,” the report stated, referring to Elon Musk’s satellite internet provider.

That’s sometimes the result of operators moving to locations without online access or due to governments shutting down illegal cross-border connections, it added.

The UN agency estimated that countries in East and South-East Asia lost up to US$37bil to cyber fraud in 2023.

It said US authorities reported billions of dollars of losses the same year from crypto-related scams and “pig butchering” schemes, in which fraudsters gain the confidence of victims.

Crime syndicates in South-East Asia are also actively enhancing collaboration with other major criminal networks around the world, including South American drug cartels, the Italian mafia, and the Irish mob, according to the UN.

It cited the example of a network with Chinese links that helped Mexican drug cartels launder money and then resell those foreign currencies to overseas buyers within underground banking markets.

To scale the operations, the criminals also need hundreds of thousands of trafficked victims and complicit individuals to work in the scam compounds.

People from as many as 56 origin countries have been identified as victims in the UN report, with the majority constituting Asian and African nations.  — Bloomberg

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How A.I. Chatbots Like ChatGPT and DeepSeek Reason

 

An illustrative image showing the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT on a smartphone in San Francisco. In September of last year, Open AI released a new “reasoning” version of its ChatGPT chatbot that was designed to spend time “thinking” through complex problems before settling on an answer. Now other companies like Google, Anthropic and China’s DeepSeek offer similar technologies. — KELSEY MCCLELLAN/NYT

In September, OpenAI unveiled a new version of ChatGPT designed to reason through tasks involving math, science and computer programming. Unlike previous versions of the chatbot, this new technology could spend time “thinking” through complex problems before settling on an answer.

Soon, the company said its new reasoning technology had outperformed the industry’s leading systems on a series of tests that track the progress of artificial intelligence.

Now other companies, like Google, Anthropic and China’s DeepSeek, offer similar technologies.

But can AI actually reason like a human? What does it mean for a computer to think? Are these systems really approaching true intelligence?

Here is a guide.

What does it mean when an AI system reasons?

Reasoning just means that the chatbot spends some additional time working on a problem.

“Reasoning is when the system does extra work after the question is asked,” said Dan Klein, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and chief technology officer of Scaled Cognition, an AI startup.

It may break a problem into individual steps or try to solve it through trial and error.

The original ChatGPT answered questions immediately. The new reasoning systems can work through a problem for several seconds – or even minutes – before answering.

Can you be more specific?

In some cases, a reasoning system will refine its approach to a question, repeatedly trying to improve the method it has chosen. Other times, it may try several different ways of approaching a problem before settling on one of them. Or it may go back and check some work it did a few seconds before, just to see if it was correct.

Basically, the system tries whatever it can to answer your question.

This is kind of like a grade school student who is struggling to find a way to solve a math problem and scribbles several different options on a sheet of paper.

What sort of questions require an AI system to reason?

It can potentially reason about anything. But reasoning is most effective when you ask questions involving math, science and computer programming.

How is a reasoning chatbot different from earlier chatbots?

You could ask earlier chatbots to show you how they had reached a particular answer or to check their own work. Because the original ChatGPT had learned from text on the internet, where people showed how they had gotten to an answer or checked their own work, it could do this kind of self-reflection, too.

But a reasoning system goes further. It can do these kinds of things without being asked. And it can do them in more extensive and complex ways.

Companies call it a reasoning system because it feels as if it operates more like a person thinking through a hard problem.

Why is AI reasoning important now?

Companies like OpenAI believe this is the best way to improve their chatbots.

For years, these companies relied on a simple concept: The more internet data they pumped into their chatbots, the better those systems performed.

But in 2024, they used up almost all of the text on the internet.

That meant they needed a new way of improving their chatbots. So they started building reasoning systems.

How do you build a reasoning system?

Last year, companies like OpenAI began to lean heavily on a technique called reinforcement learning.

Through this process – which can extend over months – an AI system can learn behavior through extensive trial and error. By working through thousands of math problems, for instance, it can learn which methods lead to the right answer and which do not.

Researchers have designed complex feedback mechanisms that show the system when it has done something right and when it has done something wrong.

“It is a little like training a dog,” said Jerry Tworek, an OpenAI researcher. “If the system does well, you give it a cookie. If it doesn’t do well, you say, ‘Bad dog’.”

(The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, in December for copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems.)

Does reinforcement learning work?

It works pretty well in certain areas, like math, science and computer programming. These are areas where companies can clearly define the good behavior and the bad. Math problems have definitive answers.

Reinforcement learning doesn’t work as well in areas like creative writing, philosophy and ethics, where the distinction between good and bad is harder to pin down. Researchers say this process can generally improve an AI system’s performance, even when it answers questions outside math and science.

“It gradually learns what patterns of reasoning lead it in the right direction and which don’t,” said Jared Kaplan, chief science officer at Anthropic.

Are reinforcement learning and reasoning systems the same thing?

No. Reinforcement learning is the method that companies use to build reasoning systems. It is the training stage that ultimately allows chatbots to reason.

Do these reasoning systems still make mistakes?

Absolutely. Everything a chatbot does is based on probabilities. It chooses a path that is most like the data it learned from – whether that data came from the internet or was generated through reinforcement learning. Sometimes it chooses an option that is wrong or does not make sense.

Is this a path to a machine that matches human intelligence?

AI experts are split on this question. These methods are still relatively new, and researchers are still trying to understand their limits. In the AI field, new methods often progress very quickly at first, before slowing down. – ©2025 The New York Times Company

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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Malaysia's experts urge for quick, clear rollout of 5G and MyDigital ID

Buiding the new 5G tower along Jalan Kuchai Lama in Kuala Lumpur

PETALING JAYA: Experts are calling for a clear digital direction and quick implementation for the rollout of the dual 5G network and the MyDigital ID programme, saying that any delay is unacceptable if Malaysia were to position itself as the choice for leading industries and as Asean chairman. Malaysia, said Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations (Fomca) vice-president Datuk Indrani Thuraisingham, must have the proper infrastructure to support such targets.

“Since we are championing artificial intelligence (AI) development, setting up more data centres and other related fields, it is fair for the relevant authorities as well as stakeholders to prepare the right infrastructure to support these initiatives.

“It is unacceptable to delay it further as it could have an impact on our country’s economy,” she said in an interview yesterday.

Malaysia has secured billions of ringgit in investment in the past year from global tech firms seeking to build critical infrastructure to cater to growing demand for their cloud and AI services.

The Star also reported that while the number of digital nomads in the country has doubled, Internet connectivity remains a major concern for them.Other countries such as China, pointed out Indrani, have even achieved a breakthrough in satellite-to-ground laser communications that could pave the way for sixth-generation wireless technology – or 6G – and other applications, including remote sensing with ultra-high resolution and next generation satellite positioning technology.

“They have gone beyond 5G and we need to keep up with them,” she said.

On Jan 2, China’s Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co, which owns Jilin-1, the world’s largest sub-metre commercial remote sensing satellite constellation, announced that it had achieved a 100 gigabit per second ultra-high-speed image data transmission rate in testing last weekend.

In terms of consumer rights, Indrani said industry players must deliver what they had promised to customers.

“Some of the customers are already paying for 5G connectivity and they need to deliver it.

“In certain places, even in Selangor and Klang Valley, we cannot get proper connectivity, and some still get 4G networks,” she said, adding that there are also complaints of dropped calls.

Malaysia Cyber Consumer Association president Siraj Jalil said any delay in the rollout of a dual 5G network and MyDigital ID programme only reflected the preparedness of the relevant authorities.

“We need to look back at the objectives of the initiative and why it is still delayed,” he added.

“Since (MyDigital ID) will be our future digital identity and represents our position in the digital landscape, the government needs to be clear on it, especially to the stakeholders which is the rakyat,” he said.

Citing the postponement in the integration of the MyDigital ID with the MyJPJ app, he said such disruptions create a bad perception to the users.

“If we cannot integrate our ID into a multi digital system, like JPJ, it shows that is not being set up properly,” he said, adding that this should be fixed

In October last year, MyDigital ID Sdn Bhd CEO Mohd Mirza Mohd Noor had explained that the integration of MyDigital ID with the MyJPJ app was not cancelled but merely postponed.

The delay, he explained, should be looked at as part of an overall strategy to ensure the success of this feature and to improve the user experience.

Sharing her own personal experience, civil servant Siti Nor Mardiah, 33, said a few months ago, the 5G network completely stopped working on her phone.

“When I called my mobile service provider, they said 5G comes under DNB, and not them. As a solution, they told me to use 4G instead. It has been months and I am still using 4G.

“The same goes for my home Wi-Fi, the 5G doesn’t work for some reason (and) 2.4G works better,” she said.

“What baffles me is that this is the situation in Kuala Lumpur, now I can’t imagine how the network is in rural areas.”

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