How can Singapore seize opportunities in AI?

Artificial Intelligence and its impact on humanity continue to be a topic of debate. Singapore is keen to harness AI in key sectors and to be a leader in deploying AI solutions.

Here, three global executives suggest how Singapore and Singaporeans can realise the positive impact of AI while managing the change and risks posed by AI.

They were recently in Singapore to attend the Economic Development Board’s annual International Advisory Council meeting, to discuss the country’s strategies for achieving sustainable growth, driving job creation and strengthening its influence in the global economy.

#1 Virginia Rometty: AI will not be a net jobs destroyer but it’ll remake work

As with any other powerful technology, AI comes with the potential for misuse.  If it is not deployed responsibly, it could have real-world consequences - especially in sensitive, safety-critical areas.  Singapore differentiated itself early by developing one of the world’s first AI governance frameworks, leading to the establishment of the AI Verify Foundation.  In doing so, the country set a standard encouraging investment and broad adoption of AI by enterprises in a safe and secure way.

IBM has long been a leader in collaborating with governments to develop effective regulatory systems.  We have been clear that the responsible regulation of AI should be based on three core tenets.  First, we must regulate AI risk, not AI algorithms. As each AI application is unique, we strongly believe that regulation must account for the context in which AI is deployed and must ensure that the high-risk uses of AI are regulated more closely.

Second, AI creators and deployers must be accountable and not immune to liability. Regulators should not exempt from legal liability those who create and deploy AI.  

Finally, we need to support open AI innovation.  An AI licensing regime would be a serious blow to open innovation and risks creating a form of regulatory capture. This would inadvertently increase costs, hinder innovation, disadvantage smaller players and open-source developers, and cement the market power of a few players. Instead, AI should be built by and for the many, not the few. 

Building on these tenets, Singapore is positioned to support governments around the world develop their own regulations that will unlock the value of AI, while addressing the broader risks to society. 

This effort must also focus on preparing our workforces to take full advantage of this technology. 

Thankfully, Singapore is well-prepared. From nationwide initiatives like the TechSkills Accelerator to company-led training programmes like IBM’s SkillsBuild, Singapore has the foundation in place to equip its workforce for success.

For over a century, IBM has been at the forefront of responsibly introducing groundbreaking technologies. This means we don't release technology to the public without fully understanding its consequences, providing essential guardrails, and ensuring workers are prepared for the opportunities and challenges.  Instead, we believe that addressing the repercussions of those innovations is just as important as the innovations themselves. That is why we will continue to be a strong partner as Singapore leads the world in AI adoption.

Virginia Rometty is the former chairman, president and CEO of IBM, a US tech giant which has been in Singapore since the 1950s. Today, Singapore is home to IBM’s Asia Pacific headquarters.

#2 Jean-Pascal Tricoire: A test bench and regulatory reference for AI deployment

AI will be transformative and Singapore should capitalise on its highly-educated population and efficient government to play a leading role in AI development and application at scale. This would mean becoming a test bench for AI deployment by building on the digital legacy and readiness of the country. This includes aggregating and structuring the largest amount of high-quality and relevant data to train and deploy AI efficiently; and attracting a large ecosystem of developers and partners to develop and capture new opportunities enabled by AI.

At Schneider Electric, we are harnessing AI for our customers, partners and internally for higher levels of productivity and ingenuity. Across our global operations, including in Singapore our East Asia HQ, we have embedded AI at every level of our digital architectures for cities, buildings, industry, and data centres. We nominated a Chief AI Officer two years ago and recruited a team of a few hundred AI specialists. They draw on our decades of innovation and advancements in data science to develop AI solutions for customers that enhance our deep domain expertise in energy management and industrial automation.

Singapore can also capitalise on its success in industry verticals and focus its AI effort on those industries which have elected it as their place of choice: supply chain, ports, semiconductors, chemicals, pharmaceutical, smart city infrastructure at a time when vertical and applicative AI will bring more value. It should also dedicate efforts to use AI to increase energy efficiency to resolve the delicate equation of energy dependency and carbon intensity. This is crucial given that the wide use of AI will require next-generation data centres operating on a higher amount of power to support high performance computing.

To sum up, Singapore should leverage its differentiating factors to do all the above, such as its:

• Universities, which should develop more AI programmes and attract more students globally
• Status as a neutral hub in Asia, a fast-developing and highly-educated region
• Attractiveness to the best talent
• Capability to move fast and scale

Jean-Pascal Tricoire is chairman of Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management systems. The company’s operations in Singapore began 50 years ago, and today span capabilities from energy management to Industrial software and supply chain management, and R&D and headquarter functions.

#3 Patrick Collison: Make AI regulation fast, flexible and tailored

It’s no surprise that Singapore is bringing together the government and the private sector to discuss the important role that AI can play in shaping the future of its economy. At Stripe, we’ve seen firsthand how Singapore has historically used smart governance and deliberate investment as a platform for innovation.

Today, Singapore has already established itself as a leader for global AI governance standards, with efforts such as the Model AI Governance Framework and the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy. There’s an opportunity for Singapore to build on this.

As for how to best regulate AI: it’s still early days. Policy accordingly needs to be fast and flexible to account for the many possible futures. Regulation should also be tailored. It should account for different risks and oversight should be balanced against downsides. A small business wishing to analyse its sales data or to avoid fraud involves minimal risk. Models for predicting pathogenicity may present more danger.

At the same time, we should be humble about what we can predict for the future. What has evolved in the last 2-3 years is not what many experts anticipated or predicted. The magnitude of the future risks is uncertain, so we should not be too quick to dismiss concerns about AI or assume that accelerating its development is always right. 

As a company building the economic infrastructure of the internet, Stripe has front row seats to the transformative power of AI. We ran the numbers and a sizable majority of the AI startups innovating today use Stripe. Many of our AI startup users are already building real businesses, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Moonbeam, Diagram, Midjourney, Copy.ai, Jasper, Lambda Labs, CoreWeave, Descript, Hypotenuse AI, among others. At Stripe, we’re also building our own AI-powered tools to improve the quality of our products: detecting and preventing fraud, identifying bad actors, making it easier to use our services, and ultimately help more businesses grow and prosper.

The economics of the coming years will be interesting indeed.

Patrick Collison is co-founder and CEO of Stripe, a global technology company that builds financial infrastructure for the internet. Today, millions of businesses from startups to global enterprises use Stripe to accept payments and manage complex businesses online.