Vivian Balakrishnan's address at the NSCAI Global Emerging Technology Summit

At the NSCAI Global Emerging Technology Summit, Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan argues AI differs from earlier revolutions: a hammer extends muscle, a spreadsheet extends mind, but AI outsources pattern recognition and decision-making to a system that won't carry human values by default. He warns autonomous swarms of weapons will eventually take humans out of the loop, breaking deterrence.

He pushes back on the framing that 'state espionage is fine, only commercial espionage matters' — a line only a cyber-dominant state can offer. States and internet giants both build walls and capture data value, and individuals end up the losers. Singapore's response is digital inclusion: fibre to every home, leading-edge tech in every school, tools democratised, with trust as the coin of the realm.

Balakrishnan calls for a UN AI convention modelled on Bretton Woods, UNCLOS and the climate framework — covering interoperability, cross-border data flows, privacy and value distribution. He warns the precondition is domestic political consensus, including infrastructure, lifelong education and enlightened immigration. With both the US and China deeply invested in Southeast Asia, Singapore aims to be the honest broker.

Caption language: en · Fetched: 2026-05-02

[Applause] well it's great to be here and i want to introduce um our special guest foreign minister from singapore vivian is a leader and a thought leader in things all things digital i think his experience not only because of his representation on his role as foreign minister but his prior role as minister in charge or small smart cities is something we all can learn from so let's have a round of applause to welcome the foreign minister and i'll turn it over to the foreign minister for for some opening comments before we have a short q a thank you thank you gilman i'm the foreign minister of a tiny city-state in the heart of southeast asia in order to be useful i'm going to take some liberties and make some provocative comments and invite some tough questions after this first point there's no doubt that artificial intelligence the advent of computer systems that can see hear translate speak recognize patterns play games there's no doubt this is transformative both at a human level and indeed at a planetary level the second point is that this tsunami is unstoppable it's unstoppable because of the explosive increase in computing capacity in global connectivity in the explosive explosion of data sets and especially with the internet of things and of course the increasingly sophisticated mathematical models and the algorithms available so it's not going to stop the question is which country or which regions are going to be at the forefront of it what are the implications both strategic and economic of that contest second set of issues what are the downsides of this explosion in ai and third what do we need to do about it at a domestic level and at international level so let me start by saying i'm going to duck the first question of who's going to be a hit we can indulge in crystal gazing during the question and answer session but let me quickly go through the potential downsides of this revolution the first thing is to understand that a.

i is very different from the industrial revolution or indeed even the agricultural revolution before that let me give you an example if you have a hammer in your hand is an extension of my muscle power if you have an excel spreadsheet you basically extend the computing capacity of your mind onto a computer system but it's still imperatively obeying your instructions with ai the difference now is that you have outsourced the means of patent recognition and even of the analysis and response to the system which means you're no longer programming the system you're a coach to the system and if you take the sporting analogy of a coach the whole purpose of coaching is so that your student exceeds your capacity there's a few critical implications of this number one is that once you allow an autonomous system to define its own means and optimize its own methods actually values ethics morality mission and vision in on a human skill do not necessarily exist and it's worth remembering this because i know there's been a lot talk about liberty and privacy and privacy but bear in mind that artificial intelligence on its own does not is not restricted to human understandings of these concepts the second point and it's worth emphasizing is that i think in the early phase we're going to see an erosion an erosion of trust and you see that even now in the very early stages the lack of trust in authority and experts the depletion of social capital even in the midst of a pandemic the fragmentation of our political and social constructs interface into echo chambers with no real middle ground and an exchange of views the third implication of this ai revolution is actually on the strategic scale you see in a nuclear age we sort of kept the peace through the concept of mutually assured destruction but when we move into an age when it will be autonomous swarms of submarines and planes and missiles and in order to make those systems effective ultimately you will take the human out of the equation and there will be killing machines at that point what does the concept of human deterrence mean so i would posit that in fact we're moving into a very unstable potentially dangerous age ahead of us at least in the short term now understanding these risks what are we going to do about it i think number one is let me share a story about six years ago i had a side conversation with president obama we were waiting for a meeting to begin and i asked him president what are you most worried about when it comes to cyber security he looked at me he told me well it state espionage we all do it but we just object to commercial espionage i've thought about that remark and frankly i think there are some problems if you think about that the first point is that that's a remark that can only be made by a nation that is completely self-assured about its unprecedented lead in cyber instruments and therefore you can wave away and say well state espionage is fine it's just commercial espionage that i'm concerned with the second problem with that statement is that it also assumes that there is an automatic wall between the state on one hand and commercial companies on the other hand now actually if you think about it both the state and the internet majors are all trying to erect walls and that's why you get questions about data flows and and data localization at the same time the truly multinational data pools lie with the internet majors but they also are trying to construct wall gardens so that they keep the value of that data to themselves and the missing person the loser in all this configuration between state and internet majors is the individual who owns the data who derives value from the data and what are the economic implications of that and now somewhat relatedly the united states and here i will you know apologize in advance but the united states is now certainly questioning whether it needs industrial policy as and you know the concept of industrial policy brings to mind our old marxist concept of the commanding heights of the economy that there are certain critical components of the economy that are of such strategic and competitive advantage that governments need to pay inordinate attention to subsidize and to support and to expand deliberately as a matter of public policy now again we don't have time to go into that debate but it's worth me reminding everyone that actually the outcome of this contest will depend on which governments are able to provide enough attention and subsidies to education to infrastructure to immigration and enlighten immigration policy to creating a level playing field for fair competition between all commercial players whilst protecting the interests of individuals and citizens and getting the balance right so that you socialize the gains and not just simply privatize the gains and socialize the downsides and that really i think will determine the outcome of this contest for the rest of us in southeast asia we have made tremendous progress in the last five decades because there was in effect a single industrial application stack for science for engineering for technology for medicine and that gave us huge advantages if we now go into a world where at the advent of a new technology that completely rewrites the rules we witness a fractured world without common rules without a common stack of norms and values and rules of engagement then we will run into a world which will be more tense less prosperous the speed of progress will be interrupted by conflict rather than competition and so speaking from southeast asia we watch all this with great interest grave concern even and with anxiety so what happens in the next couple of years is going to be crucial and on our part in southeast asia we will remain open for business we will remain open for technology diffusion we believe that ai is another example of the global commons the global commons it's in a sense for finance we had the bretton woods institutions at a strategic scale at the we had the united nations for climate change we have the united nations framework convention for climate change for the oceans we've had the united nations convention and the law of the sea i believe we also need a new united nations convention for ai to make sure we develop it we invest in it we give opportunities for our people we pursue it in an ethical way and hopefully we usher in an age a golden age of peace and prosperity rather than repeat the mistakes of the last century where we go through enormous pains and travails before we finally do the right thing so let me stop there and take questions from from you and please be robust in your questioning very and first of all thank you for those really important comments um i wanted to pick up where you left off and the importance of international rules and international standards singapore's always been a great leader in in being in the right place at the right time first in its actual physical locations being a leader in shipping and and other forms of physical transits and then underneath as a minister in charge of you know smart cities and digital initiatives singapore took the lead as being the nexus of how to deal with things like international cross-border transactions and they required a huge amount of cooperations and sometimes by countries don't play well together as you look forward in ai and challenges that you outline any advice you could give other nations on how to move forward in an organized way to resolve some of these challenges to establish what are fair and ethical standards of competition and ways to resolve differences particularly in these areas where there are social or economic differences on how you would apply ai thank you i think the first point is that all politics is local and all governments need to be able to explain to our own citizens that look there's a revolution going on but we are going to transform the education system we're going to restructure the economy we're going to look at safety nets because there's going to be such profound transformation over the next few years you first need to get domestic support for this transformation which is going to occur so in a sense president biden's focus on building back better on raising the level of confidence and hopefully consensus and congruence domestically is absolutely essential now assuming you've got the political consensus and the seat belts on for the roller coaster ride which you're going to get on you then need to invest in the infrastructure which is needed everyone needs fiber to the home there needs to be 5g for everyone internet access has to become almost a you know it's just a common utility like water and electricity next you need to have an education system that works not just from kindergarten to to you know to the age of 20 but all of us are going to have two or three careers in a lifetime and you've got to make sure those subsidies flow to enable us to retool and reskill for the next set of jobs that are emerging and then you've got to also have a system which allows you to build up both your local workforce and to be able to complement it with talent from around the world if you look at silicon valley if there was no enlightened immigration into california in the last 30 years you would not have had the digital revolution that we have all enjoyed so far and then on a global scale as i said we do need some international conventions we do need to be able to interoperate we do need global finance to flow and data is not just the new oil data is the new currency of the new economy and it has to flow but it has to flow in a way in which security is still protected privacy is respected and the value that is derived from it is distributed fairly so there's a lot of pretty fundamental work that needs to be done my point is that this should be done cooperatively multilaterally a new bretton woods in a sense for the digital and the economy and for artificial intelligence as you point out the importance of using these emerging texts to better the human condition singapore has kind of led the way in integrating these emerging technologies and everyday singaporean life from health care to education to digital transactions how did singapore was able to do all of that while still maintaining you know security and privacy and openness and do so in a very reliable way can you share some of the lessons you learned and what singapore has learned in that transformation to the rest of the world well the first thing i'll say is singapore is a very small place so in a sense it's easier for us i mean for instance to layer fiber or in fact two fibers to every single home and office in singapore is relatively easier than if you were in a continental size country but beyond the hardware as i said it's making sure that it is inclusive that there is no neighborhood that is going to be deprived of internet access that all schools will have cutting-edge technology that all tools will be democratized and commoditized and even as we digitize a whole suite of government services that we make sure no one is left behind and if you need to give people computers and pay for their broadband or give them smartphones do so do so so that you can move faster without leaving anyone behind so again i just want to emphasize that that need for a domestic focus and to carry everyone along with you and then after that you've got to make sure you maintain trust without you know trust is the coin of the realm without that so much of all these fanciful plans that you can we can all dream of will not work and once you can get that level then finance services and ex and using this as an avenue to expand opportunities for everyone regardless what field they are in everything becomes impossible so we are fortunate to be a small place well integrated well connected uh top level infrastructure and a digitally literate population that's willing to use those tools and and get ahead and we're also lucky because we are in a unique place both geographically and strategically america has more invested in southeast asia than america has invested in china india japan and korea combined most people aren't aware of that that america is so much invested here at the same time china is our biggest trading partner and we are significant investors in the chinese economy as well so for us a world in which these competing giants hopefully get along well is one with a lot of opportunities for us and our people but we'll have to watch this space with anxiety over the next few years as i said we don't control the agenda in beijing and washington but we will try to be useful we will be honest brokers we will call we will call us pay the speed we will call it as it is and in that sense try to be helpful foreign minister thank you for your time and for your comments singapore is truly a world leader in many of these areas and we look forward to the continuing leadership you have in artificial intelligence thank you very much thank you you