Cooperation on common rules now harder amid major powers’ competition, he adds
Annabeth Leow
[SINGAPORE] Singapore will anticipate and guard against the risks posed by increasingly powerful technologies, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said on Sunday (Aug 23).
Shared rules around the deployment of artificial intelligence agents, as well as enhancements to curbs on youth social media platform use, were among the tech guardrails laid out by the prime minister in this year’s National Day Rally speech.
“We will not embrace new technologies blindly,” he said. “We will anticipate the risks, and put appropriate safeguards in place. And we will always ensure that people remain in control.”
Setting common rules for AI safety #
Noting that Singapore must guard against risks that are becoming harder to predict, PM Wong pointed to the revelation in July that an OpenAI agent had broken out of its test environment and hacked another firm’s database – unprompted.
The growing ability of AI agents to take more action with less human supervision “brings enormous possibilities” – as well as the potential for “very serious” consequences, said PM Wong, who called such developments unsettling.
Singapore will bring countries and companies together to “build coalitions around practical safeguards”, he announced.
He said that Singapore “must keep trying to find common ground” on rules and safeguards, even as cooperation among countries is becoming more difficult “because the major powers want to move faster and gain an advantage over their competitors”.
Keeping youth safe online #
Meanwhile, social media platforms will be made to better enforce their minimum age of 13 years for users, as well as meet more stringent rules around features available to the young.
While platforms often already require users to self-declare their age, PM Wong called this method “just not good enough”. “They will have to put in place robust and reliable checks, so that the minimum age is properly set and enforced,” he said.
Another immediate priority is to make social media safer by design for those in their teens.
Many social media platforms are designed with features to hook users on scrolling and engagement, with children and teenagers especially vulnerable, PM Wong noted.
He said that stronger safeguards must be built in for young users, and platforms will have to meet these tighter requirements if they want to continue serving this audience.
Should a platform’s safeguards still be deemed inadequate, additional restrictions – including raising the minimum age for access above 13 – will be considered.
Casting Singapore’s approach to technological change as consistent across different areas of society, PM Wong said: “We will seize the opportunities. We will manage the disruption. And where there are real risks to our people and society, we will put safeguards in place.”
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