CEOs are also “addicted” to ChatGPT

“ChatGPT has been my companion for two years. By now, it probably understands me better than my personal assistant,” said FPT CEO Nguyen Van Khoa at the Leaders Forum 2025, the forum organized by the HCM City Women Entrepreneurs Association (HAWEE) and the HCMC Young Business Association (YBA) on the morning of September 24.

Looking back, Khoa said FPT established a dedicated AI unit in 2009 to focus on researching this field. Thirteen outstanding employees were sent to Canada for training under Professor Yoshua Bengio, known as the “AI wizard.”

In pursuing AI, the corporation’s board of directors set three main goals: “Profit - Productivity - Innovation.” Of these, “Profit” means AI must increase revenue; “Productivity” means AI must boost efficiency; and “Innovation” refers to fostering creativity and transformation.

Vietnamese people learn quickly and apply fast but also forget quickly. With this in mind, FPT set a policy to “force” employees to use ChatGPT, Grok, and other AI tools. From January 1, 2025, all reports within the corporation must be created using AI-powered templates.

Even parking lot security guards know how to operate facial recognition and license plate scanning systems to handle issues in emergency case. Kitchen staff also use AI to determine daily food standards.

Pham Hong Hai, CEO of Orient Commercial Bank (OCB), admitted he has become “addicted” to using ChatGPT.

On average, Hai receives about 1,000 emails daily. Due to frequent meetings, he cannot address them all. At the end of the day, he asks ChatGPT to summarize emails requiring responses and prioritize them, saving him significant time.

In business operations, AI enables OCB’s digital bank Liobank to assess customer credit through facial recognition or detect suspicious transactions.

Don't overly worship AI

AI offers many benefits. However, the OCB representative emphasized that AI cannot replace the human role. Bank staff still make final decisions when reviewing AI-generated credit scores. Without data verification, AI could produce biased or inaccurate models.

Additionally, Hai said he only trusts someone after meeting them in person. Through these encounters, he gains a deeper understanding of their personal lives.

He recounted that financial data for some borrowers might seem unstable. However, meeting them revealed they return home for family meals daily, indicating a family-oriented foundation and likelihood of repaying loans. AI cannot yet grasp such family-related factors. Thus, humans remain pivotal in final decisions.

Moreover, not every service requires AI’s speed. When elderly customers visit banks for transactions, they prefer staff interaction over AI, making it unsuitable for such processes.

Sharing the same view, FPT CEO Nguyen Van Khoa noted that using AI for tasks requiring emotion is ineffective. Conversely, AI excels in tasks needing speed, accuracy, and clarity, such as taxi dispatch systems.

“AI is not a wizard with a magic wand. It must be used appropriately. Within FPT, some units once overly worshipped by AI and lost much money,” Khoa admitted.

He cited examples of companies in the US, Japan, and Europe transitioning to technology. Humans remain the core and most critical resource in this process.

According to Khoa, AI project success relies on experts with decades of experience, often overlooked, who work on production lines. The key is to integrate their expertise into AI systems without leaving them behind.

Thus, when corporations like Toyota or Honda commission AI models, FPT collaborates with 60- to 70-year-old workers to capture their production experience, the knowledge machines don’t have. FPT then generalizes this expertise and integrate it into technology.

In another case, FPT was tasked with recreating how a late Honda executive would answer questions using AI. The goal was not just to generate responses based on data, but to replicate the way he would have answered during his lifetime. This allows future generations at Honda to learn and draw inspiration from his experience.

Thai Khang