This page preserves a reference summary of Strategy 5: Acculturating AI from the National AI Roadmap 2021–2025, published by MOSTI (ISBN 978-967-19025-5-4) and reproduced for research and citation with attribution. The full text is in the Playbook PDF; the official copy is at mastic.mosti.gov.my. Independent four-year analysis of how this strategy fared is in Roadmap vs Reality.
Technology adoption is as much cultural as technical. Strategy 5 addressed the softest but most pervasive barrier to AI in Malaysia: awareness and trust. A public that does not understand AI will not demand it, fear it unduly, or use it well — and businesses that see it as alien will not adopt it. The strategy aimed to make AI familiar, from the general public to the boardrooms of small firms.
It worked on two levels: a broad public-awareness push through media and education, and a targeted SME-adoption programme anchored by an “AI SCORE” maturity rating and recognition schemes.
What Strategy 5 set out to do
- Promote AI awareness across society — via social media, broadcast, publications, awareness programmes and researcher training.
- Drive AI adoption among SMEs — benchmarking maturity with an AI SCORE, incentivising adoption, and recognising leaders through an AI Star Rating and national awards.
Targets at a glance
| Target | Horizon |
|---|---|
| 12 online AI publications over five years | H1–H3 |
| Sustained social media & broadcast presence (260 podcasts / videos / posts; TV & radio) | H1–H3 |
| 8,000 attendees at AI awareness programmes for officials | H1–H3 |
| 640 researchers trained via AI roadshows (AKEPT) | H1–H3 |
| AI SCORE — 10,000 SME representatives from 5,000 SMEs | H1–H3 |
| An AI Star Rating portal; 15 ministries & 15 GLC/GOC C-suites at 5 stars | H2–H3 |
| 30 SMEs developed with “global AI potential”; a Malaysian AI Awards | H2–H3 |
Why “acculturation”, not just “awareness”
The roadmap deliberately framed this as acculturation — embedding AI into everyday Malaysian working life rather than running one-off campaigns. The AI SCORE was the clever core: a way for an SME to see, concretely, how AI-ready it was and what the next step looked like, turning a vague aspiration into a measurable ladder.
Public AI literacy did continue in Malaysia — most visibly through the later “AI untuk Rakyat” programme — but the roadmap’s specific mechanisms (the AI SCORE, the Star Rating, the publication and awareness targets) were not tracked publicly. See the live policy & literacy landscape →