Education & Skills / AI news for Malaysia
From the archive · Event date 16 January 2024
UPM wanted AI understanding to reach students and staff—not just technologists
The university linked basic AI literacy to teaching, learning and public understanding, while its faculties used an exhibition to make the technology more concrete.
In brief
- UPM said on 16 January 2024 that it intended to strengthen AI understanding among students and staff to support teaching and learning.[1]
- Vice-chancellor Ahmad Farhan Mohd Sadullah said general exposure without deeper understanding could create confusion about the technology's benefits.[1]
- AI untuk Rakyat launched at UPM on the same day, alongside exhibits from computing, health, science, agriculture, engineering and aquaculture units.[1]
UPM framed AI literacy as a campus-wide learning need
Universiti Putra Malaysia used the launch of AI untuk Rakyat at its Serdang campus on 16 January 2024 to make a wider point: artificial intelligence literacy should not stop with computer-science specialists. The university said it would strengthen AI understanding among both students and staff so the technology could support learning and teaching.[1]
UPM vice-chancellor Dato' Professor Ahmad Farhan Mohd Sadullah said people often knew about AI only at a general level and could become confused about what it was actually good for. Better understanding, he argued, could shift perspectives and help students and staff use the technology positively.[1]
The report did not announce a detailed university-wide curriculum, assessment standard or deployment policy. It documented an intention, a national public-literacy launch and a cross-campus exhibition. That makes it useful as a marker of direction, while the deeper questions of capability, responsible use and measured educational outcomes remained to be answered through implementation.[1]
The message began with understanding, not a product
UPM's stated goal was to help students and staff learn enough about AI to use it in teaching and learning. That framing matters because access to a chatbot or software licence is not the same as literacy. A useful foundation includes knowing what a system can do, where its answers can fail, how data should be handled and when a person must check the output.[1]
A third-year computer-science student quoted by UPM said AI helped explain technical computing terms in easier language and made information easier to find. That is a practical learning use, but it also illustrates why verification belongs in the lesson: a fluent explanation can still be incomplete or wrong, especially when a student is not yet familiar enough with the subject to spot the error.[1]
The exhibition placed AI across many disciplines
UPM said the accompanying technology exhibition included its Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Faculty of Science, Institute of Plantation Studies, Faculty of Agriculture, Faculty of Engineering and International Institute of Aquaculture and Aquatic Sciences. The list positioned AI as a cross-disciplinary capability rather than a single department's project.[1]
That breadth creates different responsibilities. A tool used to simplify study notes carries a different risk from one that helps interpret health information, analyse crops or support engineering work. A university-wide approach therefore needs shared literacy principles alongside field-specific rules, examples and supervision. The event report showed the range of interest, not a single safe-use recipe for every faculty.[1]
AI untuk Rakyat connected campus activity to public literacy
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim launched AI untuk Rakyat at UPM during the event. The university described the initiative as an effort to narrow Malaysia's digital-literacy gap and give the public a basic understanding of AI and its potential benefits. Its presence on campus connected national awareness work with students, educators and university demonstrations.[1]
Awareness programmes can give people a common vocabulary and reduce unnecessary fear, but they are the starting layer. Universities can add depth through assignments, supervised projects, source-checking habits, data and citation rules, and assessments that distinguish a learner's own understanding from machine-produced text. The official UPM report did not provide those later measures, so they should not be assumed from the launch alone.[1]
Why Malaysia should care
The UPM event captured an early national shift from treating AI as a specialist topic to treating basic understanding as a skill for students, educators and the wider public. The lasting test is whether awareness becomes safe, useful practice across different fields.
Students
AI can make difficult material easier to approach, while a confident answer still needs checking.[1]
Practical move: Use AI to explain and practise, then verify important claims against course materials and show your own reasoning.
Lecturers and staff
A shared literacy baseline can support teaching, but each discipline needs rules proportionate to its risks.[1]
Practical move: State what AI use is allowed, what must be disclosed and which work requires human or expert validation.
University leaders
An awareness launch creates momentum but does not prove capability or educational benefit.[1]
Practical move: Track participation, assessed understanding, safe-use behaviour and learning outcomes—not only event attendance.
What Malaysians can do now
- Teach a common AI-literacy foundation before prescribing individual tools.
- Add discipline-specific examples, disclosure rules and verification requirements.
- Measure whether students and staff can apply AI safely and explain their decisions.
What we still do not know
UPM's report described the direction more than the delivery model.
- Which courses, staff programmes or assessment standards were later introduced across the university.
- How UPM would distinguish awareness, competent use and advanced technical capability.
- What measured effect the programme had on teaching quality, student learning or responsible-use behaviour.
Sources
- 1.UPM akan memperkasakan penggunaan AI di kalangan pelajar dan staf Universiti Putra Malaysia, 16 January 2024
