Minister Josephine Teo's Comments at CNBC Converge Live 2025

MINISTER FOR DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT AND INFORMATION MRS JOSEPHINE TEO’S FIRESIDE CHAT ‘HOW A COUNTRY IS LEADING THE AI CHARGE’ AT CNBC CONVERGE LIVE ON 12 MARCH 2025

Question: Can we just talk about AI, and from the perspective of yourself as a Minister, what are the biggest opportunities right now in AI, for Singapore and for the rest of the world?

Minister: The fundamental duty of any government is to its citizens. And in our case, it's a question of how we create more opportunities for our people and for our businesses. So that is very much top of our list of priorities. When you have a technology like AI that is potentially so transformative, the key question is, how can you take full advantage of it? And the starting point has to be, what your people are doing in terms of jobs, careers, and what kinds of businesses are already here. Can AI help them to, individually, as well as at the enterprise level, achieve new peaks of excellence? That's really how we're thinking about it. So the idea that AI serves the public good for Singapore and the world starts from this point. You want people to have skills so that they can contribute even more to their own businesses, as well as to their employers. You want businesses that certainly have to compete very intensely in the global market to find that Singapore gives them an edge. That's really where all of our efforts are directed towards—building up the skills and enterprise capabilities so that at the individual, workforce, as well as economy level, we can be more competitive together.

Question: We'll dig into skills and safety as part of this discussion, but let's start with Singapore first. Because when we talk about AI in the world, a lot of the conversation always centers around the US and China, and the capabilities and companies those two nations have. A lot of smaller nations are left out of that conversation. Even big regions like Europe are left out of that conversation. So when you think about Singapore, how would you assess Singapore's position here in some of these key technologies?

Minister: It’s a very interesting question, and one that we grappled with around 2022, 2023 when we were trying to have a rethink of our AI strategy. The analogy I’d like to draw is if you think about our Changi Air Hub, where you are right now, and you think about the fact that we serve close to 40 million passengers a year now, out of the population of not more than 6 million—how is it possible that we don’t even own aircraft technology? There are commercial aircraft manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus—they are not Singapore companies, but it doesn't prevent us from conceiving of an air hub. You would want to have your own champions. And I think over the years, we were very fortunate that there were some really excellent people and outstanding efforts to build up a world-class airline like Singapore Airlines. We've got very good maintenance, repair and overhaul companies based here. We've also got aircraft manufacturing. The aerospace industry is very significant. None of these were built up on the basis of Singapore owning aircraft technology. They were built up on the basis of identifying areas where the value-add could be contributed out of Singapore that makes sense commercially to these companies. I think if you adopted that sort of mindset, the same could apply to AI too—the most sophisticated, the highest-end large language model may not be developed here, but it doesn't prevent us from working in partnership with these kinds of inventions and tools to create a value proposition that is relevant in our context and also useful to commercial entities.

Question: So many people are looking at AI and how foundational it is. Resiliency is a keyword that is bandied about when you talk about some of these technologies like AI and semiconductors, and the need to have a trustful, secure supply chain. And there are many countries in the world right now, saying that means we need to try to either reshore or own a lot of that supply chain. So from Singapore's point of view, you've got a different perspective—you’re happy to work with a lot of these global partners?

Minister: I think you’re spot-on in saying that at the heart of it, the desire is not always to have things that are created and maintained by yourself. At the heart of it, your main objective is to be able to achieve resilience. In other words, you want to have choices. You want to have options in case something happens that is not favourable. And if you want to achieve resilience, there are different ways of doing so: achieving diversity in terms of how your supplies are obtained, achieving diversity in terms of the technology that are being deployed, achieving diversity in terms of even the design of various systems that you put in place—these are all contributing towards resilience. And that's how we think about it. It's not always the case that you have the luxury of owning the entire supply chain or even the most critical components. You've got to be able to look at it and say, what is sensible for yourself to produce, manufacture or store, at least, but what is sensible for you to diversify in terms of getting the supplies? So that's the way we think about it.

Question: It's hard to have a conversation this year about AI without mentioning DeepSeek because of the ripples it had through the global markets and technology sector. But what it did show was the importance of open source and the development of open-source technology, which may give smaller nations, as well as smaller companies, the ability to create real applications. One of the conversations I've been having over the past few months was that actually, a lot of people in tech think that the models are going to be commoditised, and the real value really, is in the applications there. And what Deepseek and other open-source models are giving is a chance for companies and countries to create valuable applications. So how do you view what's happening in open-source right now, and what it means for the development of, say, some of these AI applications in Singapore?

Minister: One of the concerns we had two to three years ago was to what extent the AI hype would actually translate into real benefits in the business context. As we interacted with a whole range of industries, as well as companies of different sizes, operating in different sectors, facing different challenges, one very common theme was AI is still super expensive to use. So if we did the cost-benefit analysis, we are very interested in the potential that AI can bring. But the amount of money that we have to put into developing the use of these AI tools [is high], because it's not just always so easy—buying off the shelf, and implementing it. You may have to make some adjustments within your own organisations. The companies told us that it was still very costly for them to do so. What’s consistently the feedback in today's context with the introduction of DeepSeek is that, now, the cost considerations have become quite different. And from that perspective, in terms of being able to promote AI adoption and boost the development of AI ecosystems in many more different contexts, I think it's very exciting. And we see this happening, not just within the Government, in terms of how we are hoping to use AI tools to improve public service delivery. We see this amongst the various industries that are operating here, whether it is in finance, it is in healthcare, in transport, logistics. The enthusiasm just went up because the cost considerations have become more favourable.

Question: And that brings me on to infrastructure. There was the 500 billion dollar Stargate Project in the US recently, and France had a roughly 100 billion Euro investment in infrastructure as well. Are these countries spending too much then?

Minister: It depends on what time frame you ask. I think if you fast forward 100 years and you say, what's happening today? I think it's very hard to say that it will be too much. But these things happen in cycles. In certain points in time, you may have gone ahead of the demand and find yourself with overcapacity. This happens in many other industries and sectors too, so I wouldn't be overly surprised if it happens, but the long-term trajectory does suggest that the needs are going to grow. And if you look at Singapore’s context, our data centre capacity relative to our GDP and population, is already one of the densest in the whole of Asia. And even with that sort of build-up, we're still looking at creating more headroom, because if you want to be able to host the most sophisticated uses of AI, latency does matter. Some of the AI workloads cannot be so easily configured out of the geographical location. So even if you develop a very robust and extensive network of data centres in our part of the world, where the activity is most concentrated, you will still need to have the computer capacity.

Question: So does Singapore also need to spend 500 billion dollars on AI infrastructure?

Minister: I can tell you that a lot of companies are spending that money. I was with the former US Secretary of Commerce, Ms Gina Raimondo, when she was here last year, and we were trying to put together what the investments were like. Just in digital infrastructure and utilities, investments by US companies, not including other companies, came to about 50 billion US dollars in Singapore alone. That’s the kind of scale they are looking at. But I think actually, if you look at the numbers elsewhere in the region, they are even bigger because the gap is wider and so there is build up that is necessary to try and close the gap.

Question: There are other things to think about in terms of infrastructure—there’s energy, there’s water; how do you address some of those challenges?

Minister: We face up to these challenges, so we say that for data centres, we have a Green DC Road Map. There are essentially two strategies. One, you use less energy. Two, you use green energy. And both are necessary. In terms of how we use less energy, one very practical thing is that, what are the standards for operating data centres in a tropical setting? Do you need to be cool to such a great extent or the standards can accommodate tropical weather? So that is one of the things that we're doing. But we're not stopping there. We think that even at the algorithmic level, there must be ways of writing them in a greener manner. So we are also putting in some research resources to try and make this happen.

Question: You were recently at the AI Action Summit in Paris, France. A big focus of that was around safety and regulation as AI continues to develop as well. What would you say are you and other global leaders’ concerns at the moment around the development of AI, because I've heard warnings around AI getting out of control, outside of sight of human control, AI having incredible biases written in to some of the algorithms and the models as well. What are some of the concerns that you share with the global community?

Minister: It is interesting because before we had before we had the AI Action Summit in Paris, there was the AI Safety Summit in Seoul, Korea and before that, in Bletchley. And the conversation has actually shifted quite a bit. Because in Bletchley, we were really talking about extreme risk. What happens when the AI is able to operate entirely autonomously and there are no longer humans in the loop? Existential risks were also on the table. The conversation shifted so significantly. I think in Paris, it was centred a lot more around AI adoption. And with AI adoption, it doesn't mean that there are no risks. Near-term risks include risk of discrimination—what if you have generative AI models that are not only inaccurate, but they also reproduce biases we already observe in society? There are other kinds of risks. For example, the cybersecurity risks of AI, the AI models itself can be susceptible to attacks. That's one type of risk. The other type of risk associated with security is AI being used to develop even more sophisticated tactics that can infiltrate systems, apart from social engineering and implementing scams. So these kinds of near-term risks also deserve a lot of attention. It doesn't mean at all that we forget about the longer-term risks. Some would argue that they are not so long-term. I think we keep a very close watch, but at the same time, our citizens want us to give them the reassurance that you are also dealing with near-term risk. So the approach we take in Singapore is that we look at the kinds of legislation we already have, and we ask ourselves to what extent they already address the kinds of risk that you will see with the proliferation in the use of AI. For example, child sexual abuse materials—if you use AI, it's very damaging to the families involved. And even without AI, we already have laws against it. It's a matter of updating what we already have in the law to say that if you use AI, the law covers it as well, but there will be occasions where the law does not adequately address the risk. So in the context of elections, for example, if AI-generated images or AI-generated audio are being used to confuse the public and our democratic institutions come under great assault because of that, then you would, perhaps, need to put in place new laws. And that's exactly what we did last year. We put in place a new law to address the specific risk of AI-generated content being used during election periods.

Question: Is that the approach in Singapore to regulation because we have seen in the European Union the EU AI act, and that is looking at a risk-based approach and use of AI. In China, they have gone also for quite specific laws targeting the use of AI in context, such as deepfakes, for example. Will Singapore be looking into a broad, sweeping AI piece of regulation, or more targeted smaller pieces of legislation?

Minister: At the moment, I think the approach we prefer to take is to see how the risks materialise and the environment we have in Singapore supports law-making. If you look at the way in which Parliament debates bills, credit to all the members, it is on very solid basis, mostly evidence-based, as best as you can get. So which means that if you put forward a reasonable proposition to Members of Parliament, you have the prospect of actually getting the bills passed. And that is what we continued to do. We assess the risk and very quickly try and come up with the legislative response to that, go to Parliament and explain to our legislators why this is so important. It sometimes results in what may appear to be a patchwork of different laws and regulations, but the trade-off is that they are much more targeted, and they are much more specific. I would say that in time come, there may be a need for us to reorganise some of the bills and the acts that have already been implemented. But at this stage, we are prioritising the speed of response and being targeted in terms of the legislative measures that address the problems that arise with digital development and AI implementation too.

Question: You mentioned that the sort of three AI summits that have happened and how the conversation slightly moved on. But the whole point of them was to try to bring together countries to discuss frameworks and legislations in a global manner. There was a letter that was signed by many attendees, except for the US, apart from the UK as well. And it felt to me that as this conversation towards global frameworks continue, there are so many divisions yet. So how do you go about this? How important is a global framework around AI safety. And secondly, how do you go about getting back when there feels to be a lot of competition intention right now between nations?

Minister: You know, the way with these meetings, I wouldn't be overly perturbed a declaration didn't have all the signatures of everyone who attended. The reason is quite straightforward. In your organisations, if there is a commitment you have to make publicly, then there will need to be an internal process to see whether you are able to live up to those commitments. And there will be countries who look at it and say that that's too little time—we need to talk to our capital, we need to talk to all the different agencies. So from that perspective, I completely understand why there are occasions where declaration did not get signed. It partially depends on when this draft was surfaced, so I wouldn’t be too concerned about that. Having said that, I think at some point, global frameworks are going to be critical. If you talk to businesses operating in multiple jurisdictions and in the digital domain, the porosity means that you are in many markets and to have to deal with a different set of rules each market that you go to, the lack of interoperability is a great impediment to business expansion. It is also difficult to ensure that the citizens of each of these jurisdictions are protected to a comparable degree. And I think over time, these frameworks are going to be increasingly important. The difficulty is that the more you want people to sign it, the tendency is that it becomes more bland. It becomes, where perhaps, it is not at the right level of ambition, because it has to satisfy everyone's sense of what's right and what's wrong. I think this is an ongoing conversation and I don't expect that it will come to any conclusion anytime soon. However, I am very hopeful and I am optimistic that there are like-minded countries that are very keen to continue to move forward together, particularly in the area of AI safety. Just because we want to advance AI adoption and the build-up of AI ecosystem in all of our countries doesn't mean that we throw caution to the wind. If you want this to be truly transformative, we have to give our citizens assurance that is being implemented with great sense of responsibility and also safety.

Question: Minister, it's hard to talk about technology without talking about the rapidly changing global political and regulatory landscape. I was at Mobile World Congress very recently, on stage with the CEO of Mistral AI, one of Europe’s leaders in large language model. And he vocalised something that's kind of bubbling under the surface for a long time in Europe. And he said, we think that it's time for European companies to look to reduce their reliance on American technology, which is a discussion that's been being had in the background. But the first time I heard it publicly vocalised by a European tech company. And it comes at a time where it looks like the US is going “US First” when it comes to technology and many other areas as well. How do you navigate that landscape, particularly as it relates to what you were talking about at the start of the conversation around resiliency?

Minister: You know this idea of over reliance is not new at all. Even as an economy that was developing through the 70s, 80s and 90s, we looked at Singapore to ask if we are relying too much on a particular sector? And how do we diversify the economy? I believe, the first recession that we had post-independence was in 1985 or 1986. It was very prominent in our minds that if you are only depending on the few engines, then when the chips are down, you may not have enough to keep going. So the idea is that we would diversify our economy, the kind of activities that people were engaged in. Within each of those activities and industries, you would want to have a diversity of players in those domains. I think that is quite embedded in our way of thinking. So that's not new in any way. Having said that, I think you also have to recognise that some countries are very advanced in the areas of excellence that they have. AI is one of them. Quantum will be another one. We will certainly try to build up our own capabilities, but it is not at all realistic for Singapore to say that we want complete independence and to be self-sufficient. We decided a long time ago that that was not an idea that was going to work for us. We continue to try and engage with all of our partners. It doesn't matter where they come from at the enterprise level, and in many different ways, we look primarily for a combination of performance and also security as well as resilience. And that remains the fundamentals that will drive decision-making.

Question: Minister, I just wanted to talk about the future. In this age of AI, how you are thinking about fostering the next generation of tech leaders and things like reskilling as well, which are becoming increasingly important? I think I saw a story in the last couple of days that schools in Beijing will introduce AI courses in primary and secondary schools. As countries around the world think about education and reskilling, what are you doing at this point when you think about the younger generation here and how to build them up into a nation of tech forward and forward-thinking people?

Minister: We continue to try and engage with all of our partners. It doesn't matter where they come from at the enterprise level, and in many different ways, we look primarily for a combination of performance and also security as well as resilience. And that remains the fundamentals that will drive decision-making.

So, we paid attention to what we call pre-employment training - universities, polytechnics, Institutes of Technical Education, those are very important to us. But continuing education training is probably going to be even more important. The ability of a young mind to absorb what is of current relevance is very strong, so we don't need to do a lot to encourage young people to be savvy in the digital sense. We don't need to do a lot to persuade them that it is kind of useful to learn coding. Even if you are not able to do the most sophisticated kind of coding, simple stuff like block coding is not that difficult, and they pick it up. So I don't have a great big worry there.

I also think that our educational system has been tried and tested over many years. We've got teachers who are very invested in helping their students prepare for what we call “21st century competencies”. What we did interest interestingly decided was that instead of us trying to impress upon these educators what is relevant in this new era, it is easier for us to invite them to a setting like this and listen to people talk about how technology is changing the world. The educators themselves bring it back and redesign the curriculum accordingly. So we have a programme that we call the Smart Nation Fellows to do just that. In other words, don't attempt to, as a non-expert in curriculum design, change curriculum. You need the curriculum designers to embrace it and change it for themselves.

But I wanted to shift a little bit of attention onto continuing education and training. People after they leave their workforce, if we think that what they left school with is going to last them their entire working lives, I think that's not realistic. I think in their 40 or 50 years active in the workforce, they might well probably have to pivot three, four, five, six times, maybe even more, who's to tell? But the idea is to give them the support and infrastructure that makes it possible for them to make this pivot. One programme that I'm particularly happy about is that, once you reach the age of 40 in Singapore, and you decide that you have to go all the way back to school and acquire formal qualifications all over again, we now a scheme that can support you going back to school for up to two years, you can do it on a full-time or part-time basis. What the country, what the state, decides to do is that your financial commitments, we will help you fulfill it. Meaning that not only when you go back to school, there are subsidies for course fees, there's actually a training allowance that goes to you. In Singapore Dollars, it is $3,000 a month. So, if you take two years for this programme, that's $72,000 for you to reskill, retool and be ready for the future. That's how we're looking at it.