S’pore puts $ 180 million for AI research; launches e-GIRO: DPM Heng – Wired PR Lifestyle Story

Singapore is putting in an additional $ 180 million to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) research. He also announced that national AI programs and e-GIROs will be launched.

Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat made these announcements at the opening speech at the Singapore FinTech Festival x Singapore Week of Innovation & Technology (SWITCH) on Monday (November 8th).

These predictions were made within three broad strategies to find out how DPM Heng can recover the country from Covid-19.

In his opening speech, DPM Heng stated that the market is far from perfect and that Singapore can and should do much more while recovering from Covid-19. The country can recover faster when it comes to innovation: creating a push around technology to take a step towards change, doubling innovation to improve lives and maximizing the impact of innovation.

“We need to rebuild a better world after the devastation caused by Covid-19. We must resolutely face global challenges, such as climate change,” Mr Heng said.

“In the coming years they will determine the trajectory of humanity for decades to come. We can do much more collectively to increase the impact of innovation and drive change, to build a better world. ”

National AI programs were launched; $ 180 million for AI research

Singapore has launched two national AI programs today: one in finance and one in government.

The national AI program in the financial field will be an industry-wide AI platform for generating financial risk knowledge, called NovAI. It will focus on helping financial institutions better assess the company’s environmental impact and identify emerging environmental risks.

Mr Heng said US $ 100 trillion in funding for climate change would be needed over the next three decades to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. With the program, Singapore banks and local FinTech companies will work with financial institutions to better assess investments and associated risks and checks against greenwashing.

The second AI program would be before the government and aims to improve the provision of public sector services over several weeks.

One area of ​​this program would be to use AI text analysis, or to make better sense of the amount of feedback that front-line agencies receive each year. “This will allow us to better understand the pain points and better serve the citizens,” Mr. Heng said.

Another area of ​​the government’s AI program will be to provide better job matching and the development of more personalized jobs and skills recommendations.

“This is especially evident in the pandemic, when many have relocated and are looking to move to other industries. We are using AI to develop more personalized Job and Skills recommendations. Based on our pilot, this new tool has improved total job placement by 20 percent.”

DPM Heng said Singapore is seeing the initial benefits of its national AI strategy efforts. To further increase the impact. Singapore is putting in an additional $ 180 million to accelerate basic and translational AI research.

It is in addition to the $ 500 million committed so far.

“One of the areas where we will focus more and invest more funds is resource efficient AI. Being a small country, our data sets are also small. So we need to better train our machines to learn from small but high quality data sets.”

Carbon taxes and energy solutions

Mr Heng said it was a hard reminder that Covid-19 has been a tough one as global challenges like climate change need to be addressed with collective action.

“Climate change is probably the most serious threat to humanity. Our current trajectory, the global warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, could be breached in the next 10 to 20 years, ”he noted.

Countries around the world, including Singapore, are pushing the boundaries of technological sustainability research and experimentation. But there is much more to do. For solutions to move from pilot to scale, there must be appropriate market conditions.

The externalities of carbon emissions, such as the carbon tax, need to be properly assessed to reduce climate change. “If we properly value cantonalities, this will also shape future investment decisions and drive decarbonization efforts,” DPM Heng said.

There is room for an increase in the current rate, and earlier this year Singapore announced that it would be reviewing carbon tax rates for 2024 and beyond. The review is progressing and the decision will be announced early next year.

“Raising carbon taxes is not easy. In the short term, there will be upward cost pressure for households and businesses. This will affect the cost of living and our competitiveness. But we will alleviate the short-term consequences. Raising carbon taxes is necessary in the long run to encourage and create a much more sustainable future for all, ”he said.

Another area for building energy efficiency is the establishment of physical financial infrastructures so that markets can work across borders. For example, this is the way this solar energy can work.

“In many parts of Southeast Asia and Australia there is plenty of sunlight and to take full advantage of the potential of renewable energy. We need a strong regional energy network for markets to function fully.”

“We hope that our pilots will import electricity, and that regional arrangements such as the Lao-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore energy integration project will serve as a search engine for a wider ASEAN electricity grid.”

“The ongoing global energy crisis is a reminder that conditions are not always compatible. And we need to focus our transition well. If the basic market conditions are right, we will finally reach our goal. ”

E-TOUR

DPM Heng also announced the launch of E-GIRO today.

The GIRO is a direct debit mechanism that allows a person to set a permanent guideline for a billing institution to make deductions from their bank accounts.

There are an average of one million GIRO applications a year, but the current application process is manual.

It takes an average of three weeks to process an order and a maximum of six more weeks if instructions are required. It aims to significantly shorten the processing time of digitized processes and improve the user experience.

Singapore’s thriving startup ecosystem

DPM Heng noted that Singapore is a thriving startup ecosystem because it has placed itself at the forefront of everything that innovates.

In the first half of this year alone, it has reached more than 350 deals with more than $ 5 billion.

“We are building a culture of innovation across our economy with close collaboration between companies, researchers and government agencies.”

The country has a “firm commitment” to research and development over the decades and has committed $ 25 billion to research innovation and business over the next five years.

While innovation has benefits and while the Republic flourishes and develops new ideas, DPM Heng also warned that barriers must be in place to protect against the disadvantages of innovation.

As more people consume information through social media, he noted that there is a growing concern about fake news, the rise of extreme behavior and the impact of mental well-being.

That’s even a great way for the media to connect and connect with people, especially in times of pandemic.

“Now we are seeing more discussions about the regulation of social media. The entry of powers, the protector of false news.

He also noted that it has “tremendous potential” for AI change, but that it should also be used ethically.

Singapore is contributing to the ethical use of AI in a number of ways. An example is Veritas, a framework for financial institutions to ensure that the use of AI and data analysis is fair, ethical, responsible and transparent.

Featured Image Credit: Singapore FinTech Festival x SWITCH