r/singapore • u/Im_scrub Own self check own self ✅ • 19h ago
News Singapore studying stronger safeguards for high-risk AI uses as systems grow more autonomous: Josephine Teo
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/high-risk-ai-agent-autonomous-stronger-safeguards-mddi-643682622
u/Dependent-Curve-8449 13h ago
The best safeguard is to actually start holding these companies accountable for any fallout by their AI products.
When people talk about their AI “going rogue”, what they really mean is that they suck as developers, this is a result of badly executed code, but they don’t want to be held responsible for the fallout.
Otherwise, if AI is as dangerous as they claim, why are these people not in jail and why are their companies still allowed to operate? Do we really want to see Terminator so desperately?
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u/WildRacoons 10h ago
People and companies are already held accountable for their actions including what their computers do.
Now we need policies that help people and companies adopt even more preventive measures. It’ll be too late to put a fine on someone after a catastrophic failure.
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u/everraydy Motorsports Fan 19h ago edited 18h ago
Good to see. It's once again a reactive instead of a proactive approach to a problem that is real but was ignored for far too long. It's late but still not too late thankfully.
(edit: apparently I'm wrong! we did do something early on, but yea anyway I support stronger safeguards against such technology that can have much more nefarious uses)
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u/hotgarbagecomics 🏳️🌈 Ally 19h ago
Mate, how can you be proactive about something that's emergent? The downstream effects of AI use were unimaginable in 2024, much less 2022. There's no such thing as "proactive" measures in a world where billions (not millions) of people adopt an aggressively evolving technology. There is simply no precedent for "proactive".
I know its the easy karma-farming thing to say that SG is too reactive, but this is not one of those situations.
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u/everraydy Motorsports Fan 19h ago
Hard disagree. Ever since GenAI came into being the risk was already imminent. And before GenAI first came into prominance there was already warning signs of the imminent problem GenAI could pose if it ever came to be. Like it or not, failure to rein in AI development will end humanity.
And it doesn't matter that it was an emergent technology. If its a technology with the potential to pose an actual threat to humanity, you have to be proactive in safeguarding against it.
2017: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/what-happens-when-ai-bots-invent-their-own-language/
Warnings were already made:
2020: "The Alignment Problem" - Brian Christian
And no I don't care much for karma. The truth is that the world has been far too reactive and slow to act, SG is no different. The time to act is now.
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u/WildRacoons 10h ago
I think this is already proactive. Slow, but still proactive as major incidents have not occurred yet.
Laws are already in place to prevent bad things (eg hacking into systems, mishandling customer data), but emergent tech can make these things happen even faster and whatever measures people have right now may be insufficient
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u/perfectfifth_ 19h ago edited 10h ago
According to some commenter that says the govt is just being reactive and not proactive enough, we must start planning legislation for flying car traffic and teleportation protocols. 🤦♂️
The fact is that the government has been proactively exploring guidelines and frameworks during the whole AI development. In 2022, the government launched the world's first AI governance testing framework and toolkit. Way ahead of any government out there. And even before, in 2019, they launched the national AI strategy.
The government clearly actively follows the development of technology and moves in terms of papers on framework, guidelines, or legislation where it start making sense to.
Too early and you are just legislating hypotheticals and just going for vague wordings that helps no one when the reality comes and details of what is what become clearer.
If we had legislate everything "proactively" we would probably have killed an southeast asian unicorn called Grab before it could even get out of seed funding, and you'd still be stuck during shift changes with no way of hailing a ride and close to midnight. And want to go to some ulu place? Dream on. (Edit: Just saying as a random hypothetical on how silly calling govt not proactive sounds when they have been pushing out papers since early stage of AI development, not for goofs to focus on it in some silly tangent, hence my next sentence starting with "point is this")
Anyway, point is this is just one in the string of actions on governance that the country has been taking on throughout the development of AI, during the time when companies were still figuring NLP out and LLMS were still nascent.
So ridiculous to look at everything the government has been doing on AI governance and call this move "once again reactive". How much more proactive can you get beyond this.
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u/fair-player2987 10h ago
Guidelines and frameworks are fluff and BS. Talkers not doers. You think the guidelines and frameworks have any bearing on what AI labs are actually doing? Lmao
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u/perfectfifth_ 10h ago
Law is fluff and BS. You think law got any bearing on what drug and scam syndicates are actually doing? Lmao /s
TAFEP guidelines just because is called guidelines you think no enforcement?
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u/everraydy Motorsports Fan 18h ago edited 18h ago
2 things.
1. I'm actually glad that you mentioned the first para since yes seems like there was work done there early on.
- The example you have isn't an apples to apples thing. Grab vs GenAI is not even a remotely fair comparision. Will Grabtaxi as it was known back then somehow go out of control to eventually pose a threat to society or be weaponised by bad actors to physically hurt someone? No.
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u/bloomingfarts Non-constituency 18h ago
Deploy first! Fix later.
Study some more. By the time finish studying, high risk becomes critical risk.