Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of everyday life in Cambodia. From classrooms to workplaces, tools such as ChatGPT are now used for writing, translation, photo generation and idea development. Yet the spread of these tools reveals a deeper problem. Cambodia is not short of AI users but is short of AI-literate citizens.
For many people, AI is still understood narrowly through one familiar name: ChatGPT. But knowing how to use one chatbot is not the same as understanding what AI is, how it works, where it can fail, or how it is already being applied across education, business, media and public services. As adoption grows faster than understanding, Cambodia risks creating a generation of users who can produce content quickly, but cannot always question, verify or responsibly apply what they produce.
According to the 2023 UNESCO report Guidance for Generative AI in Education and Research, the global rollout of AI technologies is advancing faster than the development of education systems and regulatory frameworks. The report warns that without proper training, the use of generative AI can increase misinformation, weaken critical thinking, and lead to overreliance on machine generated outputs.
Many countries around the world have begun integrating AI literacy into education and workforce development. UNESCO further emphasizes in its AI competency frameworks that understanding both the benefits and risks of AI is now a core skill. This includes the ability to question outputs, evaluate accuracy, and apply ethical judgment when using such tools.
Risk of Unchecked Consumption:
Cambodia has yet to develop a clear national approach to AI literacy. There is no official data on how many Cambodians use AI tools, but digital indicators suggest that exposure is growing quickly. With more than 11 million internet users, AI tools are likely already reaching a large share of the population, especially young people. What remains uncertain is whether this use is informed, critical, and responsible.
Raising concerns about accuracy and credibility. It can also create a false sense of mastery: because AI produces polished answers with little effort, especially for users who do not take time to guide the tool or prompt it properly and they may feel they understand a topic deeply when they have only skimmed a machine-generated summary. Overdependence may weaken writing and analytical skills, while awareness of data privacy and bias remains limited. This makes AI literacy even more important: users need to know how to verify information, detect bias, protect personal data, and recognize when human judgment matters more than machine-generated answers.
Cambodia should begin with a national AI literacy framework rather than a broad AI strategy alone. The framework should define the basic skills citizens need to use AI responsibly: verifying information, recognizing bias, protecting personal data and knowing when human judgment is necessary. These skills should be embedded in school curricula, university training, civil-service capacity building and public-awareness campaigns. Key opinion leaders and content creators should be part of the strategy, not an afterthought. They can translate technical guidance into everyday language and reach young users where AI habits are formed: on social media. The aim is to move AI literacy from scattered individual practice into a shared national standard.