A DATA centre can be built in a few years. A healthy, adaptable and capable adult takes decades.
Malaysia is racing to become an artificial intelligence (AI) nation by 2030. We are investing in data centres, digital infrastructure, energy capacity, AI talent and the skills needed for workers to remain productive as technology changes the nature of jobs.
But I wonder whether we are paying enough attention to the most important enabler in an AI economy – our human capital.
AI governance already recognises this. Malaysia’s own National Guidelines on AI Governance and Ethics identify human-in-the-loop oversight as one way of preserving human autonomy. But having a human present is not enough.
We need humans with the capacity to question machines, understand context, exercise judgement and decide how technology should ultimately serve society.
Yet, much of our human-capital discussion starts surprisingly late.
We talk about graduates, STEM talent, AI literacy, reskilling and workers displaced by automation. We often ask how to prepare Malaysians for the future only when they are already entering university or the labour market.
By then, some of the most important developmental foundations have already been laid.
We do not simply train the human in the loop. We raise them.
Looking at my growing seven-year-old niece, I realise that beyond the best education money can buy, nutrition is one of the most fundamental foundations of human development. It supports the developing brain, enables healthy physical growth and helps shape the health people carry into adulthood.
Child nutrition is, therefore, not merely health expenditure. It is long-term human-capital infrastructure for an AI economy.
While we keep asking, “Do we have enough chips and power?”, “Do we have enough AI engineers?” and “Do we have enough data centres?”, perhaps we should also ask: are we investing enough in the biological foundations of the children who will inherit this technology?
Malaysia’s nutrition challenge is not simply whether children have enough to eat. It is whether they receive the right nutrition, at the right time, to develop their potential. Unicef has described Malaysia as facing a triple burden of malnutrition: undernutrition, including stunting and wasting; micronutrient deficiencies and anaemia; and overweight or obesity.
Start with the brain
Iron is important to normal neurological development. The brain hits about 90% of its total adult volume by the age of five.
Deficiency in children has been associated with risks to cognitive, motor and behavioural development.
Yet, a subsample of the National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2022 found anaemia in 46.5% of Malaysian children below five, a level the researchers classified as a severe public-health problem.
Iron deficiency is the leading causes of anaemia. Therefore, the figure should still make us uncomfortable.
If tomorrow’s Malaysians need to keep learning, adapting and exercising judgment alongside increasingly capable AI, protecting the conditions for healthy early development should be part of our future-readiness strategy.
SERI’s 2026 research estimates that childhood iron deficiency anaemia could cost Malaysia around 0.6% of GDP in lost productivity, approximately RM10.8bil based on 2022 GDP.
Then, there is physical growth.
NHMS 2022 found that 21.2% of Malaysian children under five were stunted, roughly one in five.
Stunting is not simply about being short. It is a warning that optimal growth conditions have not been achieved over time.
China shows how quickly this can change across generations. Between 1985 and 2019, the average height of Chinese 18-year-old boys increased by about four cm, while girls gained about three cm.
Better incomes, healthcare and living conditions all contributed, but China also rolled out large-scale nutrition interventions; research on its rural school-meal programme found participation was associated with better height-for-age.
The lesson is not that taller automatically means smarter or more capable. It is that childhood growth outcomes are not fixed. Societies can change them.
At the other end of the spectrum is obesity. NHMS 2022 found 16.2% of Malaysian adolescents were overweight and another 14.3% were obese.
One in three Malaysian adolescents is overweight or obese. WHO noted in 2024 that Malaysia had the highest rate of childhood overweight or obesity in Asean.
Let’s be clear, this is not the opposite of undernutrition. A child can consume too many calories while still receiving poor-quality nutrition. That is why stunting, anaemia and obesity can co-exist.
Obesity matters to the AI economy because developing capability is not enough; people must sustain it. An ageing Malaysia will increasingly need citizens who can remain healthy, productive and able to retrain over longer working lives.
So, what should we do?
First, start early. Improving maternal nutrition should be the starting point, followed by regular monitoring of children’s growth, including height and weight, and appropriate screening for iron deficiency anaemia.
These should be treated as investments in future human capability, not merely healthcare interventions. Prevention is better than cure and is far easier than compensating for developmental disadvantages years later.
Second, make healthy nutrition part of children’s everyday environments. Malaysia already has school food programmes and dietary guidelines, but we should continue improving nutrition standards across childcare centres, preschools and schools so healthy eating becomes the norm.
Third, make better choices easier for parents through clearer front-of-pack labelling, better information and food environments where less nutritious options are not consistently the cheapest, easiest or most heavily promoted, across both products and F&B outlets.
The economic logic is simple. Malaysia is spending heavily on the infrastructure that will power AI. We should think just as seriously about the human infrastructure that will determine what we do with it.
AI may become one of the most powerful productivity multipliers of our generation. But every multiplier depends on what it is multiplying.
We do not simply train the human in the loop. We raise them.
Malaysia’s AI future will ultimately depend not only on how intelligent our machines become, but on the quality of the human capability we develop alongside them.