Singapore Tech Forum 2019: an in-depth look at AI in Singapore

At the 2019 Singapore Tech Forum, panellists from AI Singapore, GovTech, DSO National Laboratories and Ensign InfoSecurity laid out the country's AI play. Ho Teck Hua framed data as a cube — population may be small, but Singapore can link finance, health and education through NRIC numbers, and the past five years saw about 3,000 AI papers from 3,000 authors, with around 400 based locally.

On applications, Ensign uses AI for cyber threat detection. GovTech and the Ministry of Health launched a Grand Challenge in chronic disease, aiming to halve hypertension, high cholesterol and diabetes complications in five years. DSO uses AI for video analytics over restricted petrochemical sites and autonomous unmanned vessels in congested waters, freeing limited manpower for higher-value response.

On talent, the AI Apprenticeship drops graduates into real projects worth at least US$500,000; AI for Industry runs three-month engineer bootcamps; AI for Everyone and AI for Students reach the general public and secondary schoolers. The remaining challenges are data liquidity, the bridge between product managers and compute teams, and exporting solutions into Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and China.

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

[Music] hi everyone very nice to have you here with us today to talk about AI and Singapore I'm Denise and I work in Google on partnerships in AI initiatives um so like this is right after lunch and this is a time where our human intelligence is probably at the lowest levels so I want to do a quick exercise and play a little game with you like just for like two or three minutes so can has everyone to stand up alright so I'm I'm going to ask you why three quick questions or if you want do a little stretching off go free go ahead so I'm gonna ask you three quick questions and if your answer is yes you get to sit down and I promise you no trick questions and no special effects here so first question so who of you is already working in a I related areas if yes please sit down well I am I'm standing hahaha and the second question is who is interested in exploring opportunities in AI I was going to ask that question like who walked into the wrong room I guess not everybody is in the right place so very good happy to have you here with us today all right so um thanks so just me for doing the introductions with our panelists today um I'll just we'll just be talking about AI in Singapore for the next half an hour and I'll have another ten minutes at the end for Q&A so let me start by asking each our panelists to talk about what they do in a I work in one sentence okay hi I guess everyone can hear me so I'm a Han yang so I work in ensign info security so the my scope of work actually uses AI in the area of cyber security which I think we all know there's a lot of cyber threats coming up yeah so that's my area hotel ah run AI Singapore which is a national level research program hosted by us ah hi I'm LV no I mean from GAF Tech yes I said AI division my team is called AI platforms so the focus of my team is really to build and develop data science and AI platform and US agencies to use data driven approaches for policymaking and service delivery my name is econ I were in DSO National Lab so we are defense R&D lab in Singapore my team we built robots few robots with AI capabilities we also use AI to solve other than data to data problems as well as making things more effective and efficient for national security purposes I see a lot of familiar faces sitting at the back and I just want to say hi does that no all right thank you to my panelists so let me start by asking a question so you know in many countries such as US and China also aggressively pursuing AI and I'm sure many of us wants to know what's so unique about Singapore that you know that position as well to do AI so you know like Alvina so in my view I think some parts is well positioned because I think our government is quick and nimble to AK making Singapore good test B to test and deploy any sort of AI solutions that were GNA buzzing about to provide a blueprint for all future deployment for yeah let me just this old man said be lot longer than what she once but let me just try to say in three different dimensions so the first one is about AI strategy I think we Singapore I think everybody believed that embracing technology including AR is the way to grow the country and the way to go forward so we now have PS and chicken was chairing the task force look at AI nationalised strategy yes and positive is a platform that was formed two years ago by the government they put it significant amount of resources I would say ninety eight knots eight or seven digit and the goal was to actually accelerate adoption in Singapore in second areas about terrorists I know that everything as Singapore is a small country but I actually do the simple facts 2k you guys can't get the same page I look at all the researcher in Singapore how many people they published in the last five years about 3,000 of the 3,000 they were 3,000 authors in in those three thousand publication even look at those who are locally based about four hundred so in the way actually the talent pool is not a space as Singapore because Singapore Singapore has a tradition working globally with different partners so you look at an entire ecosystem of people working with Singapore in research 3,000 people work in AI which is not small and we don't have to be good in every area we choose to be a niche area to be well and we'd be doing very well the last miss about data I know a lot of people think that all was a small country the data it's not right now I disagree so I like to think about data I work with all the eight-hour AC news and and so on so for data there's a data cube think of the other cube there's one dimensions call number of people we only have five point five million people it's small compared to China and us the automation is I call it time how many pictures you take a snapshot we are lost am shocked I can say that Singapore has a long tradition of keeping the eat are certain about snap so is long the other dimension I think we're going to be very good its number of variable that you take a picture like in finance how care in education so we can use the NRI C number which Singapore anyone know you can link all that either say together in a singular jacket needed a say I don't think any country has that differentiation across the different domains so my take on that is that our USP unique selling proposition is going to be both data because we are comprehensive data set tellin because we have a traditional working globally with different talent pool the multiplier could be turned like 400 to 4,000 right and finally I think because we have this unshakable belief that a is the only way to go forward and we have really investing heavily in it let me stop here well thanks thanks for whole life talking about you know how despite being a small nation we still have like good data and good talent to do AI so let me now dive deeper into the promising areas of AI and Singapore so what would you say are some of the promising areas of AI that we have in Singapore okay so um maybe I'll just say from the inside security perspective so again like everyone knows that like saga threat says you know reason you know unprecedented Lee over the last few years I mean right now like hacking incidences like very common nowadays you know from companies to even individuals so now we are talking about you know really whether AI itself can help us to detect some of this more elusive cyber threats so which is why I think back a few years ago the crew of us actually started to try to apply some AI techniques to detect some cyber tress and again like if you talk about Singapore itself you know we are always at the forefront of innovating you know we want to try to sort of produce some good solutions and all that so again there are a lot of opportunities in cybersecurity and especially for AI which helps to marry to variety disciplines so yeah I mean moving forward I will expect there's a lot more you know solutions that's coming out that marries AI with cybersecurity yeah so we actually I think about just launched a grand challenge in healthcare I know how care in the u.

s.

is almost impossible to get data and we were able to work with Ministry of Health they have a group called I guess which is the one in charge of IT so whatever get data from many many patient with chronic disease from high blood pressure high cholesterol diabetes and so on and we assemble the data set we combine with the reimbursement data for for getting money back from the government subsidies and so on also linking with diagnostic data we are the x3 and so so the data size is huge and we're able to gain access to that and putting in the secure micro SS lab that allow research to go in to gain access that and to me I really believe that Singapore can really make a name for itself in how big did our air in healthcare and we're looking to different possibly they're getting people to live longer with less disability for example while the challenge statement is very clear-cut how do you reduce number of cases a complication resulting from high pressure high cholesterol high sugar level our goal is to drop it by half which is like 50% drop in five years time hopefully in ten years time we can achieve almost carry or complication completely so each one you're working defense I'm about in the area of defense ok so the defense area sees that challenge some slightly differently as we know that Singapore faces also a demographic challenge we don't people that are not born 18 years ago today they won't be able to take on security operations or self national service and enhance actually I think in the security and defence area that's a severe problem of having not enough people to do jobs increasingly complex and challenging so the way we approach it is and one of the because way to solve this problem is just simply to make it a machine smarter to be able to help in decision making or to make machines do things better so that our people can focus on you know higher value chain and higher value jobs so a give example so you know we used to be very concerned about people intruding into restricted areas for example like the wrong Island okay and because he's a big petrochemical facility and and you know in the past you need people to you know patrol the area you know put use sensors binoculars to look out for potential intruders and these purveyors to go on day and night 24/7 and it's very strenuous for manpower another we have introduced actually video analytics and AI algorithms to not just detect but better recognize you know suspicious into the intrusions and from there then we trigger the necessary people to respond to them so it drastically changes then the nature of the involvement of the limited manpower that is now deployed to really just respond to you know critical incidences instead of having to burn time you know looking at sensors 24/7 so that's one example another example would be meaner aerials also in robotic so and and people know that actually we have been moving into new some unmanned ships to do more like you know the injury tasks like you don't need to look for maybe dangerous things in waters and and you know in order for ships to operate in autonomously in a very very congested waters around Singapore so you need to be priest man right to avoid no other vessels and hence you know the developing the AI in the vessel to be able to do that is a very critical piece of solution and we continue to improve the robustness and smartness of these systems so that then you know the operators do not have to sail continuously in our waters to cover a big area but the hand they can look at what the autonomous vessels are detecting and hence respond to it so these are just two examples of how I see AI making significant impact in the way we change the way we do things in the defense and national security area all right so it sounds like there's a lot of promising areas like from cyber security to healthcare to defense so I'm sure there must be a lot of challenges that you faced as well I in doing a are in Singapore so can you share like some what are some of these challenges that you have in doing AI in Singapore okay so for me I think powerful already mentioned on the data problem I think for me it's not so much as a problem but something that we need to overcome so I think in terms of train labor they are set for any sort of machine learning for Singapore they are set it is to not that sufficient even though we are working on making data access and data readiness something to be looking to be looking forward to so that's the data problem the second one which is a little bit more of a workshop - which is in terms of data telling which prof also have mentioned I for Singapore we have a fair number of I like AI talents but by a notch di Jagan's are still associated with the tech giants in North America or in China our index a I research index is very good so I'm hoping that we can actually attract more people to come back to Singapore to either either work with government or even in a start-up last one which potentially might be a challenge for AI adoption is really the market for AI start up in Singapore it is primary still smaller than a lot of the other countries so any form of AI startup must minimally original yeah so that is all the challenges that I think the companies as well as the government in Singapore faces so um what are some of these other challenges who are we overcoming these challenges I must mention two things so one thing that I'm always worried about is this that you have fantastic technology but but the citizens and average people might be afraid of the technology how can you figure out a eye solution that touched many people's life so one of the reason why we launched the first chance in healthcare in chronic disease dominance is that we we know the base rate of people having that disease very high if you are 60 years old your chance of getting diabetes about one-third and if you don't have it your family member will have it so the reason why we work on those those our domain is that we hope to energize the whole nation on relevant application on the AI that improve people's quality of life and I actually think this is one of the thing that we need to do as a country so that I actually like come on Kota chicken who who said to your face honey I like you have an AI that do a face you recognize that you have been helped by a technology that is so pervasive that everybody can appreciate and and people will reduce their barriers and fear about technology second thing I really believe that Singapore one thing we need to really overcome I call it data the quiddity platform just like stock exchange your very liquid it means a lot of people are trading it so you think our platform for data if the platform is there but it's not liquid that means they're hard to gain excess of data that's not very powerful so I really think that we can make it the big push for getting our data to be liquid and yet secure the innocence says privacy preserving so that with nobody will be upset with you when we share the data will be very powerful for Singapore and I'm hoping that this actually is not as a policy solution but it's also a technological solution we need to develop whoever can figure out a way to make data liquid at the same time secure and Trust trust that would be very powerful for for the country other ways are we doing to overcome some of these challenges for AI well I think this morning many of the people see that here I have heard the panelists talk about Helen and I think well I agree with one of the panelist who mentioned that the talent pool which we see it as it's a global talent pool that you know that sienten moves around a co system and helping each other to solve the really challenging problems so how at least I see going forward to solve some of these talent problem is that we really have to have the spirit of collaboration and every organization which is having was looking into building AI capabilities in a very you know sustainable serious way should think collaboration in a very big way because we can never hold all the AI talent to yourself and I I speak from the perspective that you know from from a defense are in the organization okay I see that we the biggest way that we can actually push the the break throughs and the solutions will come up from here for some of the very challenging problems that we face is a future collaboration so maybe people find surprising that you know we actually collaborate and you know great a lot of with all the professors you know the carabineer in an international in a very big way so many of the publication's they meet with the various you know AI experts around the world and there's no problem publishing some of these brick truths because that's how people then you know ideas generate new ideas and that's how we complete consistently tap on this global talent pool then from there we can actually start to customize these solutions through the industries and through the development teams and we can actually you know start to really adopt a yei in a very very big way and without having to keep all the talent pool to ourselves expand on that point so even at my D Rho is the provost and us so we know a lot professor to take 50% with a company 50% with a university what totally cool about it because we know that there's no way you want to keep a hundred percent they are not going to stay with you they are they are constantly tempted with challenging problem in the industry hi sorry even so so we actually open and another possibly is for the government to allow the golf to employ it with 50 percent industry 50 percent government I think they should be open about that too so so and I I couldn't have a sigh sit more while we are small we has a culture traditional working globally with talent pool in fact I actually just give you a statistic NUS has 9,000 publications about 7,000 we will be international collaborator from 136 country including start a very remote country that you never thought possible so that tradition is always there because we has been small and we haven't grown bigger so we always been trying very hard to work with our partners globally yeah and so working globally is a very important point like this morning we talked about how we can unlock the market potential for Singapore like be to Southeast Asia and beyond to the world so in this respect like for AI how can we bring Y this AI technology that we have to solve is Asia and beyond okay so maybe I'll just comment on that so basically for Singapore you know again like there's a lot of constraints but yet you can see there's a lot of opportunities that just blossom so again as what we you know decided to take the step of building a smart nation many years back I think there's a lot of potential for Singapore to become to become the regional cyber ha so again from the cyber security perspective there's a lot of untapped market and again with all this hacking as incidence it's not just only applies to Singapore like every countries are facing similar kinds of issues so if Singapore is able to sort of view relatively good solutions there's a lot of opportunities for us to move regionally to offer such services to the neighbors around us to thing was in health care I'm aware that in China in the other incident I be teased as Paris Singapore when you hit the same age of 16 years old so whatever solution come out from the Grand Challenge will be exported to those country to help those country to live longer and better second thing we are really excited about a I in education Singapore is famous for having a very good educational system and a la causes of math and science is being exported to other country so we are thinking very hard about launching a grant channel in education whatever we develop using AI will be able to export it to Indonesia Vietnam Thailand and China - right and so many of our audience here today they are very interested in opportunities in here because they all sat down just now and so what would you say are some examples are interesting job opportunities for those who might be interested in AI okay I think in the spirit of I think both the panelists mention us now in this view of collaboration I I think for a IIFT for say in order for AI to grow in Singapore we really need to collaborate globally so for CAFTA we have the smart nation fellowship and we also have we also started a mentorship problem a program where we reached out to a Silicon Valley I think are you here today and these experienced engineer's where she mentor the engineering teams in addition we are also open to working with startup about the product that we develop recently for hawker and speech-to-text what has she done version refers Silicon Valley startup and they really impressed us in the short time that they took to adapt the engine to the Singapore corpus in a short time about two weeks so we actually I love something like that that's a quick prototype for agencies you so there's a lot of opportunities and quite a fair bit of challenges if you are engineer or researcher for for you to be in Singapore because I think the the problems that you see in Singapore is somewhat unique so if you like challenges oh you like transfer learning this is a good place for you to be actually just asked questions how many of you guys want to be professors or academics when you've next few years anybody I saw a few please send me a email TCK and us dot edu is gee I will definitely reach out to you back and very quickly within two days how many of you got on the stack company started AI company so here is Singapore has an AI makerspace we will invest in start out at least hunger startup so if you are interested in startup in Singapore please contact me to see my email address that we will be seriously give you a space a server space with data and tools and lo you to do startup and will invest those startup with VC together humbly week I want to implement AI solutions or technology please raise your hand okay yes Singapore's Co invested 200 company working with them to implement AI innovation we need people please join me and send me an email again our link your after all depend on which company you're on the work phone we have about so far we invested in 30 company we really need engineer who can implement solution my because pinpoint said wipin no one implement though they just get my money without implementing a solution so I need people who I can trust that make thing happens and I trust you guys will do the right thing for Singapore so please send me an email as I say either professors startup CEOs or engineer a manager managing project we have 200 project for you to manage and contact me thank you take out your pen and pencil what's our email again so young any other thoughts on interesting job opportunities okay so I think like um you mentioned there's a lot of exciting things that's happening so again for myself you know I chanced upon cybersecurity kind of a few years ago so I'm a data person so basically letting out the cyber security space is a child challenging for me but yet I think there's a lot of you know good news that all this knowledge will come to especially to support Singapore smart nation vision so I guess like you know all the budding engineers and the entrepreneurs out there you know I urge you to just come forward and just you know offer your skillset I think there's a lot of interesting problem for you to solve yeah any bit for defense ok that's a tough one yeah so yeah I mean from DSO one of the things that we do we hire Singaporeans so Singaporeans who wants to come back and contribute to something nonprofit something you know for the greater purpose of defence and national security yeah are we here all day and people wants to talk to be to understand a bit more about you know the opportunities feel free to come look for me but all of them I think we also offer many challenging problems that that is shown open to people who start ups and Technology implementers who wants to come up with solutions because know we don't solve all the problems that we know I mean it's not always possible and many of these I think the better solutions can be out there and that's where we are very interested to know talk to more people in collaborate to find you know solutions and that can help either the startup that you're working you know through a Provo and then you know we provide no problems and then you can look at a solution space and ever you can actually have a chance to grow more and more solutions that are based off Singapore and it could be something that you can then ship off to the region right so this is not a recruiting talk so well we think that a lot of difficult questions again as around AI and I've asked all the easy ones I really want you to ask the difficult ones and open the floor up to ask questions now right so I'll just repeat it for people at the back so and I'll just like shorten it so oh you're asking about what's the ethical considerations right and given all the privacy consider concerns and other how do we can how can we like do a eyeli safely securely I think I mean in many ways we're gonna be we're gonna be like like China we will never be like China which is key leveraging on data that they can do a lot quick implementation I will say you were to ask me to guess with more like the European country if we care about privacy a lot but we had to do it through two ways one way is through technologies that used privacy preserving and not install just pure analytics that you can do is a promising few that we are investing heavily in the second thing is to policy and governance that we were actually working very hard towards that so why were in premature we have we could be very careful about that that privacy and so on so far you're mentioning so I will achieve I don't know what the futures can be like but I'm pretty sure that Singapore in many respects would be the trusted place to implement a nice solution test betting it because we really care about both implementing at the same time care about secure and trustworthiness as well professor expand mobile a on education and expansion opportunities Indonesia and Vietnam so we yes Singapore have in many ways invest in the law yeah educational which we have four different program now one is called AI a predator ship program which you are after you finish your degree you want to be a engineer we assign you to a real application project with at least half a million dollars work you work with a company make it happen and they might just hire you as a result of that and most of them could reach from start-up medium-sized to big company we also AI for industry these are people who are engineers who a technical background but they go to a three-month intensive training in AI I see those people are we call AI a neighbor right you know how to embrace AI technology but you can produce a solution so we also air for everyone is a way to get people to be known for your AI is like a eyewear and we also ear for students even for secondary school student so we're trying to figure a platform that we can reach out to Indonesia and other countries so that we can actually make it portable currently the FO in the streets quite portable we went with the entire and bunch of other company that there is mostly online a fraction of line and you were to ask me the most not scalable pieces the apprenticeship program that work on real project in the cities that will help up a hundred project any point in time then we can trade about maybe 300 and genius every year which is not very fast bicycle reasonable it is question to a professor horse or so my name is Glen I'm gonna say you and a co-founder of AI stirrup so my question is I heard a lot about the software and application but uh is ID like a policy or anything to do for the hardware especially given you know Singapore the major player for the semuc target in the semiconductor industry so anything we can you know help us to beauty like a presence using a ball for AI chip G when we when we invested those company we the only requirement we have is you have to be based in Singapore it doesn't have to be a Singaporean who owns the company does it make sense so when you do work with many startup that the I she non Singapore who run the startup and because the idea is that when you're there you grow the ecosystem you have Singapore as a country you had a junior web-based there right so we don't have that problem so we do have people work in smart system and robotic we don't have people working flexible electronic that actually power some of the IOT sensors so there are a lot of professional work in the engineering side of it which is the IOT the flexible electronic I've we have people who work in electronic skin who who are figure a way to achieve figure out technology has advanced material AI a car intersection so we have a lot of people doing there but most of them are in in the university I think well not many I mean we work with a couple apply material with another semiconductor equipment company they just said a copy lab with us Hungarian DARS project we are working how to do semiconductor in the AI we are using machine learning and so on hand in the back of the room good afternoon thank you to all of you for speaking up just wanted to ask a question to anyone of you guys who can take this often times working AI or data science I would be biggest problems tend not to be 10 in addition to ourselves and the data tend to be people who use the data as part of the you know product product managers and things like that people like that who are in not necessarily coding but part of the vision of creating an AI product given that that is really crucial to our work how do you guys tend to tackle getting the talent of product managers who know how to do for my team we have product managers not all them a technically trained as an engineer come to us like this I have found that the best product engineers sometimes are the ones who can really best to people's problem but yet at the same time understand what are the benefits that AI or even data science can bring to the agencies so was if you get them on their site I think it is by far easier battle to fight then I'm trying to shove it down your throat so that's my strategy so let me just can't say with a three C so it's so out the way I think about AI is always data captures the capture piece there's a computational P which is the machine learning those people who do algorithmic work there's a creating solution which basically people who create based on algorithm cream solution create value so so you ask you the biggest bottleneck is the bridge between create solutions and computation people your point about product manager who are creating solution piece a lot of time they don't understand why people are doing which is the computation piece I think it depending on don't mean I would say that in healthcare for example it's much easier for the computation people to understand how kit and reverse and for for example marketing for example especially up for computation people to understand the domain because it don't mean it's much easier to understand so I think you're very but I think it's true that in Singapore the biggest pain point I saw about implementing solution is always the bridge between the computation people domain people who create solution for the customers another question I am following up here on the previous question and this is more like I guess like a bigger picture question you you know it sounds like Singapore is pretty much in that stages of acquiring the talent building infrastructure and then collecting the data and so on so that's still kind of in an early stage and if you look at the successful companies what they've managed to do very well is actually putting all these pieces together and so you know cultural factors come into play and I won and often those who have managed to do well is because they take a very focused strategy so you shed a lot of the opportunities initiatives going on in Singapore do you feel like top-down there are certain priorities that we want to go after or are we gonna do more like a bottom-up approach where we want to create the environment and then see you know maybe uh may the best succeed they'll comment that please I think at the end of day to be a combination of both because I think that karma is pushing for some big use cases that will change the entire country improve the people's lying Korea law industry and company but they also people are not interested in those use cases you're the genome room to grow so we couldn't use the bottom out push for those cruel people who might see that future better than the government are not so clearly we don't know and so I I would say I think if you ask me the first other approximation is this think currently we are all directed top down a little bit so there because we were small weren't to be focused but I think we was a live room for people who want to be bottom up - I always invest in 30 company and the 30 company maybe I'll say three third that she is related to what the government wanted to do the other one is individual who are interested in certain thing it will just support them and live and grow if they can survive it's good for us oh honey you're in cybersecurity do you feel that you are a priority okay I think like force a biscotti itself my own experience is definitely it's not going to be smooth because you are really really fighting like flaws in systems and all that so again you know yeah I mean what are you lucky no no is a tough push but again you know there's a lot of real use cases that you know the the few of AI can be applied to the few of cyber security so again like you know like all explainers where they all started out is a tough path but again like hopefully you know you'll see some light at the end of the tunnel and really really impact is going to be immersed this is mine my own thoughts yeah question yeah posit a framework and one of the principles are fairness so how do we define fairness do we have certain protected classes day we look out for and for each product we deploy we see how the how these people you know interact with the product and whether there's any discrimination he can't repeat that you want to ask like how we do fairness actually I'm actually I do research in that so I'm passionate about that because yeah machine learning need data if human exhibit biases that's unfair they say I'm very hiring practices unfair you know interviewing processes that you use those data the machine will become bias too but as a girl researcher is trying to by us in fact because we can capture the machine-learning way you can try to identify potential biases so that you can correct those biases in the real world and also correct the machine - it's a very exciting topic I have quite a few researcher and us is working on that try to D by Asst unfairness in the data that happened naturally occurring in the human nature right I would say we have we're not tackled in a series about many researchers independently working on a small project like that personally I'm really interested in unfair hiring practices in in the world like any way we could mine our engineers for example and so on so far we have one question so thank you all for insight were twice so my question is so from the panel discussion I'm seeing the pattern of applying AI to solve local problems for example like AI for defense and it when it comes to data collecting Singapore definitely has total control over the data that internally comes from Singapore but for those who wants to build their AI solutions and scale it to a more global level they might need data that comes from say other countries and we when it comes to that like how is that being addressed from your experience or are there any like you know challenges when it comes to like collecting data at a large scale they come from many sources maybe I'll take that full stop okay so so since you mentioned defense I thought I'll just take that question first so some of the projects that we do we collaborate say with ETH Zurich and we collect certain data that it's open and we share we've openly with them and we do joint research and the research is published but at the same time we also make sure we add in diversity to use datasets that's open for all right you know the key datasets and all these are very famous data system both as benchmarks as as well two at versity because the buildings looks different the roads looks different you know the trees looks different and that's how we ensure that there's some element of this research first ensures diversity and second thing it allows us to work openly having datasets that we walk up on TV people so that we can all you know contribute to the solution so you don't have to protect all your data I think although we won't be talking about data as a precious commodities like the new oil but if you do have data sets that you can put on the table and you can work together and collaborate on it I think that's one of the first easiest and the most impactful way of just you know contributing you're a I talent pool together and solve useful problems so I don't I think it can be managed very very well and very easily this happened how care to by the way because we have been exploring with you so AI UK on doing chronic disease conditions how can we share data set that whatever they do that we can replicate it here as possible so how care is the car comment don't mean that many doctor have been working to get off to tack up major disease infectious disease and so on so there's this cultural partnership with in Singapore and many other countries so I will take one more question hi so some time ago there was a study done with publicly accessible I'm not sure if is IMDB or Netflix there was an entertainment provider that released data for the purposes of data scientists to use for a study and somebody actually I managed to deduce all the identities of the anonymized data in data set to match to real people how are they how is data being sanitized in Singapore's data collection this is a very I'm not an expert in privacy preserving and neurotics they are people who work on the in fact in in in Singapore okay we are very very careful so what we do is we view a micro SS that there is located with the premises of the university the AI Singapore is hosted and we only allow people who are pre-qualified to gain access to the data and there to do it in a proper way so so currently we're still trying to push them those slowly and incrementally we are not so brave so we are doing step by step trying to make sure that whatever we do is kind like but you're quite right a lot of time you can figure out a few variable you can back it out what the person is by you example in Singapore we have 40,000 babies you divide by trend in 65 days you have only hundred baby a day you divide by the zip code that's 60 or well the street code you rapid know if you I know your address I know your data but I know who you are simple as that right so all those things come in and we were very careful so I have to say we wanted to be selling as a trusted partner for data sharing right we are working towards that but but your question had to be a technology solution a tree they are for example they are way to put up the data without disturbing that means for example that I can put up your data per by plus or minus 200 days plus or minus 100 day then you can put a bit and then you can change their address too so there are people work towards the car the car encryption and privacy preserving analytics algorithms yeah and you know I don't that's do a lot of questions but we're actually running out time and before we end I would just like to ask our panelists on their response for for one question they say what is your vision for AI in Singapore and please stay in one sentence because in true Singaporean efficiency fashioned I start with me my dream is to see air to be so pervasive Singapore everybody can feel and touch air technology in ten years to come okay for me I think that's why the Minister Vivian has say in the morning is to create more trust for data sharing and to mixing upon only a smart nation by a more secure smart nation for me my vision for example is really to have sing about becoming a global hub to test and deploy AI solutions and towards the vision that this way she allows Singaporeans to have rather job well you seem to have better jobs and for me I think yeah I just you know looking at AI from a very fully in Syria in a very it could be creepy girls way so that everybody has access to it some languages accessible to you know a limited group individuals I think it will really benefit Singaporeans in in a very big way going forward well thanks to our panelists please give applause and thank you to all our audience I hope you continue to think about what you want AI to be in Singapore and you're free to get the professor whole email now please thank you [Music]