FIVE LEVELS OF INTELLIGENCE AT A WESTERN UNIVERSITY Opening the journey of Trà Vinh University toward becoming the “AI University of the Mekong Delta”
Level One: Seeing the Future in the Ordinary
A morning in Trà Vinh.
Dew still clings to the coconut trees, and the bells of the Khmer pagoda ring slowly. Students walk into classrooms, carrying dreams not yet named.
If seen as usual, it is just another university in the Mekong Delta. But step back a little, and a bigger story emerges:
A western Vietnamese university entering the era of artificial intelligence.
AI – artificial intelligence – may sound distant, as if it only exists in the world’s technology hubs. Yet, AI can begin in the most familiar places:
- A drone flying over rice fields.
- A sensor in a shrimp pond.
- A mobile app helping farmers identify pests.
AI is not confined to the lab.
AI can be right in the field.
And a university that learns to see the future in these ordinary things can become the starting point of great changes.
Level Two: New Thinking for a New Land
The Mekong Delta faces unprecedented challenges: climate change, salinity intrusion, global competition, and the demand for green, low-emission transformation.
These problems cannot be solved by old experience alone.
They require new ways of thinking.
AI is one of the keys to this new mindset.
AI can read data from the soil, the water, the weather.
AI can predict what humans once could only guess.
An AI university in the Mekong Delta is not meant to chase global technology trends.
It is meant to solve the problems of its own land.
Rice, shrimp, fish, coconuts, fruits – all can enter the data era.
Then, agriculture is not just the experience of ancestors, but the science of our time.
Level Three: AI Belongs to All Disciplines
Many think AI is only for IT students.
But AI is like a new language of the 21st century.
- An agriculture student needs AI to analyze soil and crops.
- An aquaculture student needs AI to monitor pond environments.
- A medical student needs AI to support disease diagnosis.
- A tourism student needs AI to tell cultural stories to global visitors.
Thus, AI does not belong to a single faculty.
AI runs across all disciplines.
An AI university is not the one with the most computers.
It is the one where every field knows how to interact with data and technology.
Level Four: An Open University Engaging the Community
A university confined to classrooms keeps knowledge on paper. But if it steps outside, knowledge becomes the power of society.
An AI university in the Mekong Delta must connect with farmers, cooperatives, local enterprises, and research institutes both domestic and international.
- A farmer may not write a line of code. But they can use an AI app to know what their rice field lacks.
- A small business can use AI to forecast the market.
- A cooperative can use AI to trace product origins.
Then, the university is not just training students.
It is upgrading the knowledge of an entire region.
Level Five: Technological Intelligence and Cultural Wisdom
AI can learn from billions of data points.
But AI has no cultural memory.
In Trà Vinh, Khmer pagodas have stood for centuries.
Traditional festivals still take place with every lunar season.
An AI university here must carry two streams of intelligence: the technological intelligence of the era and the cultural intelligence of the land.
- AI can help preserve the Khmer language.
- AI can digitize cultural heritage.
- AI can tell the story of Trà Vinh to the world.
When technology meets culture, knowledge gains a soul.
A Garden of Knowledge Growing
Today, this journey may have only just begun: a small lab, a group of passionate students, a few modest research projects.
But the history of the Mekong Delta shows that great things often start from tiny seeds.
From a single grain of rice, an entire land can be nourished.
From a small idea, a new future can emerge.
Who knows? One day, from the green campus of Trà Vinh University, scientists, engineers, and tech entrepreneurs may emerge, contributing to solving the big challenges of the delta.
Then people will realize that in this alluvial land, there is more than rice and coconuts.
Here also lie the seeds of artificial intelligence.
Seeds silently growing, so that one day, Trà Vinh University may become one of the beacons of AI knowledge in the Mekong Delta.
Why not?
Author: Lê Minh Hoan, Vice Chairman of the National Assembly