KUALA LUMPUR, Oct. 5 -- Malaysia's artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions are running up against a hard reality: the country is short of more than 500,000 AI-skilled workers, a gap large enough to threaten the RM50 billion in economic potential its AI economy is projected to unlock by 2030.

The shortfall goes beyond numbers. Various workplace studies show that, depending on the sector, as many as nine in 10 Malaysian employees feel inadequately trained to work alongside AI - leaving a significant share of that projected economic output at risk of never being realised.

In a media release, assessments by agencies such as TalentCorp have also warned that hundreds of thousands of existing roles - often cited at around 700,000 - are highly v...