Microsoft says Asia’s climb up the value chain—from ‘made in’ to ‘created in’—will make it a hub for AI adoption

Companies in Asia-Pacific are frantically trying to explore how to best use AI to improve productivity, according to new inquiry data from Microsoft, which the new company president in Asia attributes to the rapid rise in the region of the region.

“We have crossed an inflection point where the two decades of” made in “-” made in china “and” made in vietnam “- move around the decade of` `created,” said Microsoft Asia Rodrigo Kede Lima president Fortune.

Asian companies do more design and technological work, which creates a basis for the adoption of AI. Asia deposits 70% of all patents, houses two -thirds of developers around the world and consumes more GPU than anywhere else, said Lima.

“We consume more AI than the rest of the world,” he noted. “The region is ahead of AI.”

Lima took charge of the role in September after managing Microsoft's business activities in the Americas. Before that, he was president of the company in Latin America, which, according to him, has prepared for work in a “multicantry, multicultural and multilingual” region. “Asia is Latin America on steroids,” he said.

However, the story of the AI ​​of Asia has already overthrown at least once in the short duration of Lima in the role – thank you for the startup based in Hangzhou Deepseek.

Before the Chinese startup shakes markets, large American technological companies, as only entities with sufficient capital to invest in the cost of costly calculation to train and manage models, seemed to dominate new technology. However, Deepseek models require much less computer power, potentially allowing more companies to get involved in AI.

The actions of the Magnifiment 7 fell by around 16% on average for the year. However, Microsoft has performed better than its large technological peers in the middle of pricing uncertainty, only 6% for the year so far, not much worse than the S&P 500.

For Lima, Deepseek “proves that AI really happens, and that it will become cheaper and more omnipresent everywhere”. More broadly, he thinks that we will start to see more “small models of language” or AI adapted to specific areas, such as medicine.

And customers will adopt the choice offered by a more competitive AI market. “A model could be a bit worse [compared to others]But it will be good enough and much cheaper for certain tasks, “he said.

Why do Asian companies want to use AI?

Friday, Microsoft published its annual Work trend indexwhich uses both the responses to the survey and the data collected from its office software products to examine the trends and behavior of the workplace.

According to Microsoft, data, just over 60% of managers in the Asia-Pacific region want to increase productivity. However, nearly 85% of business leaders based in Asia and employees complain that they no longer have time or energy to give. (These two figures are slightly higher than the world average).

Microsoft's report blames the almost constant interruption at work for this productivity gap. The data collected from the company's products suggest that notifications – combinations, emails or even simply a ping – switch workers every two minutes on average.

The American technological company suggests that “AI agents” – programs that use AI to resolve the user -defined tasks – can help fill this gap between business demands and resource constraints. Lima has suggested an example: an AI tool could be able to attend a meeting for you and present to you if your name is mentioned.

However, the rise of AI agents could put even more white collars and based on knowledge in danger of automation.

Fortunately, Microsoft Data suggests that leaders in Asia-Pacific want to use AI to do things that humans cannot do, as available 24/7 or provide “unlimited ideas on demand”.

Lima is optimistic IA will create new jobs by increasing economic productivity so that, in balance, employment increases. “I do not believe in the elimination of jobs, I believe in quarters of work,” he said.

However, he thinks that understanding the functioning of the AI ​​will be the key to the future labor. “AI is the new mathematics,” he said. “You are going to create agents in the same way as you create a spreadsheet. And if you don't do that, you are not going to be as productive as the person sitting next to you.”

This story was initially presented on Fortune.com