‘I’m terrified’: AI comes for Southeast Asia’s graduate jobs
From Bangkok to Singapore, AI dread grips young jobseekers as the bottom rung of the career ladder starts to buckle
Nafeesa Azman has applied for hundreds of jobs over the past two months, yet the 24-year-old Malaysian marketing graduate is yet to find a permanent role that pays what she needs or uses the skills she spent years, and a good deal of money, developing.
For Joshua Nai, a Singaporean graduate, the writing was quite literally on the wall. He completed a three-year diploma in animation and game art at Singapore Polytechnic in 2024, but abandoned his dream of a career in gaming after seeing the increasing amounts of AI-generated artwork being used in the industry and elsewhere.
