Opening Remarks by Minister Josephine Teo at US-ASEAN Business Council (USABC) and US Chamber of Commerce (USCC) Roundtable in Washington DC

1. Thank you very much, Brian (USABC President and CEO Ambassador Brian McFeeters) and John (USCC Executive Director (Southeast Asia) John Goyer) for hosting this discussion with U.S. companies.

2. My colleagues and I from the Ministry of Digital Development and Information are very happy to have this opportunity for an exchange. Earlier today, I met Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Michael Kratsios to discuss ways to support the wider adoption of advanced AI technologies in our part of the world.

3. I was happy to share with him that within Singapore, the adoption of your products and services has gone well, with some of the bigger names having set up shop in Singapore.  More recently, these include OpenAI, which is building up a sizeable team of forward-deployed engineers. This is against the backdrop of strong individual AI usage in Singapore, which is among the highest in the world on a per capita basis.  For companies like OpenAI, the next opportunity is to translate this strong individual adoption into enterprise use.  There is therefore interest in exploring meaningful enterprise use cases, where successful adoption in Singapore could serve as a reference for other markets. 

4. This is important because we believe that the use of AI can improve competitiveness. In the case of Singapore, it's not a low-cost place to operate. The more you can improve competitiveness, the more attractive Singapore becomes for businesses. We welcome these developments.

5. More recently, Anthropic also decided that it would grow a significant presence in Singapore. Its strategies are not identical to OpenAI, but suffice it to say that we are seeing strong interest in Singapore as a location for AI research. It's not just about AI adoption; Anthropic is very interested in working with us on strengthening assurance. How can we introduce measures that are proportionate and yet build a stronger foundation in AI safety, security, or governance?

6. We share this perspective that for a technology like AI to be used as widely as possible, trust cannot be ignored. We have to demonstrate through our actions and the initiatives that we put in place, that we are serious about ensuring that the use of AI delivers benefits while minimising harms.  Having that shared objective is very encouraging. These companies are not looking just to build a business in Singapore, but also to build it sustainably.

7. Other companies such as Physics AI are very interested in the fact that manufacturing still contributes about 20% of Singapore's GDP, and what that means is that not just generative AI, but embodied AI has so much potential.

8. Today, if we look at the density of industrial robots around the world, Singapore is second only to Korea. While there is a significant gap, there is headroom to do even better.  We are looking at a space that is still very nascent, and the question is how we can identify a competitive edge and build capabilities in that direction.

9. The same applies to our semiconductor industry, which accounts for about seven percentage points of manufacturing's 20% contribution to GDP. While we don’t have the full stack, those parts of the stack we have are significant. For example, 20% of the world's supply of semiconductor equipment still comes from Singapore.

10. Contrary to our initial expectations about quantum technology development, we were more focused on the software aspects of quantum computing.  Because we have semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, we could potentially contribute to the hardware aspects of quantum computing. It was an angle that we didn't realise initially.

11. There are certain types of operations in areas of strategic value to Singapore where quantum computers could play a part. For example, we have a busy port, and it makes a huge difference where you store the containers in the yard. If you place them appropriately, you’d save a lot of time when you need to reload them on another vessel. The computations involved are very complex. Classical computers can’t optimise these movements very well or quickly. But with quantum computers, you could potentially optimise them much better. There are also other use cases in the financial services sector. For example, the pricing of complex financial products. Given that we are already a financial hub, this lends itself to further use of quantum computers in the future.

12. This relates to another very important area – quantum computing has the potential to break encryption. All the concerns we have about cybersecurity today will pale in comparison to when quantum computers are able to break encryption, and the cryptography that we have applied to safeguard all of our tools and our most important data, may not hold up.

13. How do we bring about the quantum-safe migration? Having set a timeline, there could potentially be opportunities to grow an ecosystem around these capabilities. We don't know when Q-Day is going to be, but building these capabilities is nonetheless going to be helpful.

14. I was quite cheered by the large turnout at the launch of the Quantum Industry Association in Singapore. It's taken a long while because we invested in building up the Centre for Quantum Technologies more than two decades ago.

15. This is a continuing story in Singapore, where we take whatever foundation we have and try to keep growing new capabilities for the future.

16. We count ourselves fortunate to be in our part of the world, which is relatively peaceful, and where the population is positive about digital technology and AI. Our objective must be to uphold their trust and, at the same time, take full advantage of what this technology could offer us.

17. I see this as a backdrop for U.S. technology companies to do a lot. Next year when we become ASEAN Chair, we want to ensure continuity. The agenda that we pursue will build upon what our Filipino colleagues have done, and provide a foundation for what Thailand will be able to build upon as well.

18. In the AI domain, we are setting up a programme called ASEAN AI for All. It will have a few key themes:

a)      First, we want to address the question of adoption. We want people to become much more familiar and confident in the use of AI, whether in schools, as individuals, or within organisations.

b)     Second, we want to demonstrate that as policymakers, we have a sense of responsibility. So we will also look at what we can reasonably do at this stage to strengthen AI assurance.

c)      Third, we want to showcase innovative uses of AI.

d)     Fourth, we want to ensure that the foundations of data continue to be upheld. We have a foundation of cooperation on cross-border data flows, which we think is important for a region of 700 million people. With each of us individually not that big, being able to bring together data that resides in each of our jurisdictions is going to be important for companies.

19. Significantly, next year is the 50th anniversary of US-ASEAN relations. Singapore-based U.S. companies are already reaching out to us to identify occasions when they could engage with the ASEAN community, and we are working very closely with them.

20. On that note, thank you once again for being here. I look forward to our conversation.