Singapore to strengthen AI governance for a more business-supportive ecosystem

The Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) is introducing guidelines to strengthen artificial intelligence (AI) governance in Singapore, in its bid to make the AI ecosystem more supportive for businesses.

In her opening address at Personal Data Protection Week on Monday (Jul 15), Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo emphasised the importance of mitigating data risk for businesses and consumers to trust AI-enabled products and services.

“In the age of AI, the need for data and trust has come into sharper focus. Today’s generative AI-enabled products and services, such as chatbot applications, are being built on the foundation of more and more powerful large language models, or LLMs,” she said.

She noted that businesses will continue to need data to deploy applications on top of existing LLMs in the meantime, and “likely for many more years”.

However, she highlighted risks involved in the datasets used for AI development, such as result bias produced by models built on such datasets.

As datasets may contain personally identifiable information, generative AI models built on them may also regurgitate such information when prompted.

“If these risks are not mitigated, businesses and consumers alike may find it difficult to trust AI-enabled products and services. Without a foundation of trust, support for AI innovations could diminish over time,” said Teo.

With this in mind, MDDI plans to introduce a set of safety guidelines – which will be part of a testing framework and software toolkit AI Verify – for generative AI model developers and app deployers.

The guidelines seek to establish a baseline, common standard for generative AI development with a focus on transparency and testing.

The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) will start consulting the industry on these guidelines to ensure they are “relevant and robust”, said Teo.

MDDI also intends to support an increased usage of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) in AI, as PETs can help businesses optimise the use of data without compromising personal information.

Through IMDA’s PETs sandbox, the Personal Data Protection Commission released a proposed guide on synthetic data generation. The guide will help businesses make sense of synthetic data by explaining its definition, how it can be used, and the best practices in creating them.

Teo further announced that a new Asean guide on data anonymisation will be released early next year.

“I hope it will serve as an important and practical resource for businesses in Asean looking to anonymise data for greater and more responsible use of data across the region,” she said. 

Source: Business Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

Self-radicalised S’porean teen, 14, and ex-public servant, 33, given ISA restriction orders