Transcript of DPM Gan Kim Yong’s Dialogue, “Leaving Asia’s Comfort Zone”, at the World Economic Forum 2025, Davos, Switzerland

Haslinda Amin: AI has been called a once in a generation technology. It has already transformed economies and companies across the world, though the full value of AI has yet to be unlocked.

It is estimated that AI can add about 16 trillion dollars into the global economy by 2030. Now, to put that into perspective, that is more than the output of China and India combined.

The thing is, even as we talk about the benefits of AI, we need to acknowledge the risk that AI can further deepen inequality. We’ve had the IMF saying that it is concerned that AI, if not done right, will not address the issue of inequality. So it is a huge concern – profound concern, in the words of the IMF.

So how do you do AI right? How do you capitalise, leverage AI, to develop new growth models? How can Asia tap AI to leapfrog and transition from fast follower to global leader?

So, I am really privileged today to introduce to you our speakers. To my left, Pichai Naripthaphan, Minister of Commerce of Thailand; Angela Wang, Senior Vice President and Chief Investment Officer of Neusoft; Gan Kim Yong, Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, the “Lion City”; Milton Cheng, Global Chair of Baker McKenzie; and Martha Sazon, President and Chief Executive Officer of GCash. Well-represented by Government as well as the private sector.

Minister Gan, let’s start with you. We know that when it comes to Singapore, Singapore leads in terms of AI preparedness. It tops the charts in Asia, it is number 2 globally, it has an AI strategy, it is putting money to it. Give us the sense of the key takeaway – what is crucial, what is key, to that AI strategy in Singapore?

DPM Gan: Thank you very much. I think AI, as you pointed out, is going to be a key game changer going forward. First, it is going to change the way we do business; it is going to change the way we work; and it is going to change the relationship between business partners. So I think there is  a lot of promise. And sometimes, as we discussed earlier, it is going to change the way we report news, and how we manage this session, it could have been managed by AI as well. There are a lot of opportunities for AI.

But as you also rightly pointed out, it not only does not help change the game, but also in fact it could create problems. Therefore, it is important for us to have a framework on how we can develop AI properly, with guardrails and guidelines put in place to ensure that they are deployed properly, and in a meaningful way, and be a force for good.

So I think this is something that we will continue to discuss and evolve, because AI on its own is also evolving very quickly. So the guidelines and guardrails that we develop also have to continuously evolve, together with the technology.

Singapore has introduced the National AI Strategy 2.0. Within that strategy, we have certain aspects. On economics, we are looking at how we can encourage our businesses to adopt AI. So we are developing sectoral AI centres of excellence. For example, w e introduced a manufacturing sector AI Centre of Excellence, to allow manufacturing plants to tap on AI capability and to deploy AI. We also encourage specific companies to develop their own AI capabilities.

But beyond economics, AI also has a role to play on the social side. For example, one of the key concerns that many countries have is ageing – how do we look after seniors at home, how do we ensure that their needs are met and catered for. Today, we send our caregivers, our healthcare workers, our social workers, to visit seniors at home to make sure that they are alright. But in time to come, with AI, you might be able to have interaction with seniors to make sure that they are taken care of. If there are any issues, any problems, you send the physical person down to help the senior. So this will allow you to scale the care services for seniors enormously.

So I think AI is going to change the way we do things – not just economically, which is a very important part of it – but also socially, and our relationship with one another.

But I need to emphasise that we need to continue to be very careful with how we develop AI capabilities, and how we deploy them. One particular area that we need to be mindful of, is the transition impact, because AI also has the potential to displace jobs and workers, and even, businesses. Therefore, we need to manage the transition process, by enabling our workers, giving them capabilities, training, upskilling, so that they are able to position themselves to embrace AI and to benefit from the contributions that AI is going to bring. So I think you need to do this in a systematic way and a holistic way, so as to cover all the angles of AI.

Haslinda Amin: And Minister Pichai, what is the Thai way? I know you have a tagline, “In Thailand, AI for all”. You have a national strategy.

Pichai Naripthaphan: Yes, we do emphasise a lot on AI. Last year, when people talked about AI, it was (inaudible). But this year, it is going to be serious, it is going to be the real thing.

In Thailand, luckily, we have a lot of excess electricity. We have like 16,000 megawatts. So whenever the big one comes, they say “oh wow, we have 16,000 megawatts left for electricity”, and 29% is renewable and we are going to add more so that they can start right away.

For Thailand, at this moment, we have US$8 billion in terms of investments already. And we are looking for a huge investment with the UAA. UAE, they have a company called G42, and they are going to create 5 gigawatts of AI hub and data centres in UAE, which they cover all Europe. And they got a linkage all over the world. You know, SoftBank is planning on US$100 billion – it is also data centres and AI, and I think UAE is also involved in that, and I think Thailand will be a part of that. They are planning on 1 gigawatt in Thailand. We are working on the details now. So it would cost US$50 billion but we need to gradually accumulating and that’s our big plan.

But at this moment, Amazon, Google, you know, all the big players are already in Thailand and Nvidia just visited Thailand not too long ago. We are very committed. Because Thailand, we have been in a comfort zone for too long. Ten years of 1.9% growth is unacceptable. Now is the time for us to increase more.

But you know, not only AI benefits us. We also are a producer of many other components of AI and data centres, just like, Western Digital, they expanded production in Thailand on hard disks, because hard disks are the heart of data centres. And Seagate also did the same. I talked to the CEO of G42 – he is Chinese, but he has become a UAE citizen now – his name is Peng Xiao. He is quite good. He said that data centres are just like crude, AI is just like a (oil) refinery. If you have more crude, you have good refinery, and you become an intelligent centre. He said, in the past, we used E=MC². But now, in the new world, E=I; E=intelligent.

So we believe that Thailand is very committed to the AI era and we need to build people to be intelligent so that we can be like Singapore.

DPM Gan: Can I cut in? I think Minister Pichai is very humble, and I must give credit to Thailand. Thailand is leading our discussions and negotiations, within ASEAN, on the Digital Economy Framework Agreement. Thailand is chairing the negotiations on DEFA, and DEFA is a starting point, because it allows ASEAN members to digitalise, and digitalisation is the first step towards AI – wide application of AI. Thailand is leading the charge – not only within Thailand, but also helping to bring the whole of ASEAN forward into digitalisation and eventually towards AI.

Haslinda Amin: Milton, we talked about how AI needs to be inclusive. In a country like Thailand, for instance, SMEs in particular, they count for 40% of GDP and I think, 99% of all companies. When you think about AI being inclusive, people-centred, what is key to that?

Milton Cheng: Well, I certainly resonate with what Minister Gan said about making sure that people are trained. But I think that as AI proliferates now, what we are hearing coming out more and more from discussions is exactly as you said, Haslinda, the people element. How can AI help humans flourish, as opposed to AI for the sake of technical efficiency or making lots of money for companies.

So that covers a number of different aspects. Some of it is training, and I will touch a little bit on what we are doing at Baker McKenzie later. But it’s broader than that. It is also about the ethics of it – making sure that AI is there to support the values that the society that it serves has – justice, fairness, looking out for the well-being of the population, making sure that underserved populations can have access to things, such as fintech, and we’ll hear from Martha later on as well.

It is also about having that balance, so that the human element is never forgotten. So not only to augment what people can do, but make sure there’s always a human element in the decision making – certainly for the key elements of it. But also that, at the end of the day, humans can intervene if things are going off the rails – so some of the guardrails that you mentioned.

For us at Baker McKenzie, we’re an international law firm, we’re in 40-something countries around the world. We are not at that scale, able to be a leader from the front, but we are certainly trying to roll out AI. We build it into our tech stack, across our business. For example, Microsoft 365, we have more licenses than any other law firm. But what we are trying to do is also make sure that we skill our people. Because our believe is that AI will augment our lawyers, not replace them. But in order for it to augment, we need to train them across all fronts. We see that as part of our being responsible in our deployment and use of AI as well. So not just train them on applying all the regulations firm-wide, but also training them on the tools, the particular business lines, even where, for example, we are working together with third parties. So it’s the training, the ethics, the human oversight element that can’t be forgotten.

Haslinda Amin: We talked earlier, Martha, about how we want to bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots, and GCash is actually doing that. Started as a fintech company and now is a super app. Your platform allows the unbanked to bank, they have access to a lot of different services, they are able to invest – not just in stocks – but also now in bonds. Take us through that thinking on how you have managed to bridge that gap.

Martha Sazon: You know, Haslinda, I am quite impressed about your knowledge about GCash. To Mr Cheng’s point earlier about helping humans flourish, we actually use a lot of AI to help address the underserved. And as you know, before the pandemic, we were highly unbanked – only 29% were banked. But because of the adoption of fintech in The Philippines, the banked rate has now gone up to 65%, and those with financial access is even higher – about 80% to 90% now.  

And GCash has worked towards using tech, data and customer centricity to address societal issues like financial inclusion. So at the heart of what we do really is financial inclusion, and a big part of that is allowing credit to people who need it the most. 56% of our population do not have documents. So that big problem there is that the underserved are the ones who are the victims of high interest rates, of usurious interest rates and loansharks. 

So how do we address that? We use AI to score them. So those who use our app with payments, everyday transactions, we are able to score them. And rather than them presenting collateral, we use their digital behaviour for them to build their trust score. And they have a credit score that is produced by GCash within our app. And now more and more people have access to credit without having to present any collateral. And with that, we have been able to release more than $3 billion of loans to more than 7 million Filipinos.

But unlike the banks, we do not release big loans, it is more everyday loans, which is what the underserved segment really needs. We offer as low as $2 loans, which is practically what the lower eco segment needs to bridge their budget gap for the week. So it is small ticket loans.

At the same time, we use AI for EKYC. To start with anything with financial access, is to get you onboard. And in the past, it was so hard to apply for a bank account because you need all the documents. And in a country challenge like The Philippines, we were able to give them proper identity and proper onboarding through the use of AI so that all they need to do is a selfie, and some ID, and we process that and we give them access to digital financial tools. And eventually, through their use of payments and everyday transactions, we are able to graduate them to financial services. And that’s where bonds, stocks, even crypto, and international funds come from. We are able to offer access to international funds for as low as one dollar. And the way we market it is – rather than buying a milk tea, put that $1 and get your funds. In that way, you learn to save for the future.

So that’s how we have been addressing societal problems through technology. That is why, we agree there is work to be done in governance, ethics, when it comes to AI, but also, there is a lot of good that can be done if you use it right.

Haslinda Amin: So it’s been a game changer in The Philippines, it’s also been a game changer in China. Neusoft is a software company that has been involved in the transformation of a lot of industries in China. And talking about China, it is positioning itself as a cutting-edge country. Talk to us about how far reaching it has been for China and what kind of game changing aspects AI has done for the country.

Angela Wang: Actually, AI has been very quickly adopted in China. If you look into the data, not only are the individual consumers very eager to use AI, very curious to embrace AI applications, but also the industries and the enterprises. If we look into the investigation, more than 85% of enterprises in China has been accelerating the investment in AI and using AI in their daily operations. That will significantly upgrade the industrial and also reduce the operation cost, increase the performance.

And not only that, companies like Neusoft are helping industry to use AI. You mentioned that AI may create some inequality, but we are using AI to fix the problem. In China, the population is very big, and geography-wise, the country is so big. The problem, one of the most serious problems in China, is the imbalance of medical resources. The best doctors are only in Tier 1 cities, like Beijing and Shanghai, but the citizens in that Tier 1 city only stands for 5% or 6% of the population. How about the people in the Tier 2 cities, in the rural areas? We digitalise the physician’s methodology of the treatment into the algorithm, and helping, using Internet, using AI algorithms, to help those in the rural areas and Tier 2 cities’ physicians have a better treatment.

For instance, COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, is not so famous but is ranked as the third leading disease in China. More than 100 million in the population have this disease, and it is called the “hidden killer” because in the very early stages of the disease, it is very difficult to diagnose through a CT scan. Most of the physicians will ignore it. But when it enters the late stage, it causes a very high percentage of deaths. So we worked together with Zhong Nanshan, who is the top physician in China in this area, to use his methodology in our algorithm which is now being used in hundreds of hospitals in China, in different cities, and helping more than tens of thousands of cases in China. It is really saving lives.

Haslinda Amin: We talked earlier about how the workforce needs to be upskilled, and we are talking about technology that keeps evolving. How do we approach upskilling of the workforce? Mr Pichai, Mr Gan.

Pichai Naripthaphan: First of all, for Thailand, we like to encourage DEFA, as His Excellency said. We believe that each country, whoever is ready, should do it first. ASEAN has ten countries. So probably four, five or six countries are ready for DEFA, so we should start it first. In fact, this afternoon, we had a session on this matter, including many people, one from The Philippines, one from Cambodia, and one from Malaysia. I said that we should start, set a date, so that we can start DEFA, because it can encourage the flow between ASEAN countries. So I said that, to pick a date, 29 October. You know why? It’s my birthday. But seriously, I think we need to set a date, in order for every country to expedite it. Whoever is ready, join first, whoever is not ready, we encourage them to join later. That is the concept.

For Thailand, we also would like to position ourselves as a data centre embassy. The country that is not so sure about their security, like Middle East or some in South Asia, they may want to store their data in Thailand. We would be happy to do that. Good thing about Thailand is that everybody loves Thailand. We can, you know, China like Thailand, America like Thailand, India love Thailand, Italy love Thailand, Middle East also love Thailand. That’s our plan. So we try to be like the Switzerland of Asia, of ASEAN. You know, we have more space, and we can create more of the renewable energy here. We can create it right away because we have excess electricity, which is important for everything.

At this moment, Thailand is also becoming the biggest producer of printed circuit boards (PCBs) in the very near future. We have huge numbers of PCBs coming into Thailand. You know, I went to Peru, and the minister of Taiwan, he said “You will be the biggest producer of PCB because everything flows to Thailand”. And even Hewlett Packard’s operations are in Thailand now. So we are getting all the benefits. When PCBs come in, semiconductors will follow, so that is why we are planning.

You know, I am not a technical guy on AI, I have to admit that. But as an administrator, we try to facilitate and see how it is going to be and how we can cooperate with every country. In fact, we have the idea of inviting our ASEAN counterparts to use Thailand as a sharing thing, because the more data you have, the more data. So if you can store something, please come to Thailand. We will be glad to facilitate you. That is what we do best.

Haslinda Amin: Minister Gan, when you talk about upskilling, it is also about providing the incentives for companies, for SMEs, to upskill their workers.

DPM Gan: Absolutely. I think from Singapore’s point of view, we have always focused on productivity, and upskilling is par for the course. We do that all the time, all year round. In fact, particularly for AI, we have rolled out industry transformation maps (ITMs) for different sectors of industries, because they have different needs, different requirements, different resources. So we developed ITMs for different sectors of industries. The ITM is on general industry transformation, but within the ITM, they have a manpower transformation plan. Part of the plan will include AI transformation. So this is an area where we want to encourage, work with the companies, to introduce transformation for their manpower needs. AI is one aspect of it, together with decarbonisation. You really need to reskill your workers regularly – in fact, all the time – so that they can catch up with the technology, with the skills needed for the future.

That’s why we also have a SkillsFuture scheme, to help support, give subsidies and incentives for training. So you are right, we focus a lot on skills upgrading, we invest a lot in skills upgrading, we incentivise companies and individual workers to go for training. This is key in the transformation journey.

Haslinda Amin: Upskilling is one issue, regulation is another. It does seem like companies have different approaches to regulation. In terms of Singapore, it is pretty relaxed. There is no fixed regulation, ministries are able to come up with their own so they remain nimble.

DPM Gan: I must correct that.

Haslinda Amin: Okay, I stand corrected. Do clarify.

DPM Gan: Actually, for AI particularly, we have developed quite an elaborate code of conduct for how we should develop AI, how we should deploy AI, in an ethical way. We are quite serious about it, and we have collaborations with many countries in developing this code of conduct, this guidance.

But it is also important for us to understand that this technology is evolving. So we have this concept called sandbox. The idea of a sandbox is to allow experimentation of this new application, this new technology, but we have a very light touch in terms of regulation because you really don’t know how to regulate it before the technology is mature. But we keep a very close watch on the development of the technology within the sandbox. So in a way, we allow them flexibility to evolve, but at the same time, we keep a close watch on the development to make sure that they are within the guidelines. Just to correct the impression.

Haslinda Amin: To stay nimble.

DPM Gan: Nimble, flexible, but at the same time, we are very careful in providing guidance and guardrails to make sure that they are doing it the right way.

Haslinda Amin: Milton, what are  your thoughts on how it should be regulated, or not.

Milton Cheng: I think certainly there needs to be a balance between regulation and facilitation. When you look across the world, there are different models. There are some light touch – or super light touch, in light of some things that happened yesterday, no touch in some countries – there are those which provide guardrails, parameters, and of course further down the other side of the spectrum you have more prescriptive, like China being one, where the rules are set so people are clear and there is horizontal regulation, and the EU is somewhere in between.

Ultimately, each population, each government, needs to decide what suits its objective and purpose. What I would say is that it is an opportunity for Asia, for ASEAN, in particular. It is still quite fragmented – Singapore has got its way, Thailand has got its way, and others. And ASEAN as a region can – if there is coordination, hopefully under the DEFA – it can really bring a lot of it together because different countries within ASEAN bring different things. [Thailand] is the storage centre, [Singapore] is the skills, services centre, so on and so forth. If ASEAN, through DEFA, augmenting various other multilateral agreements, can bring it all together, I think there is huge opportunity for it to be a leader going forward into the intelligent age.

Haslinda Amin: You’ve touched on Southeast Asia. Bring in China. Because China has got quite an established AI industry. How do you compare how it approaches regulation? What has worked to encourage the industry?

Milton Cheng: You mentioned at the outset, Singapore being near the top of the charts. China is also there because when you look at what they call AI vibrancy, there are a number of factors. The ecosystem is very developed in China, the public take-up, but also the government support, the types of policies you have. And China is also near the top of the charts. US is of course the most mature of the markets, it is right at the top. But China and Singapore are there because R&D, the research output in China, is excellent, and the proliferation of commercial applications in China is just amazing too. But also, very critically, the government support for AI initiatives is really a big driver of that. We see that in Singapore as well.

So there is a lot to be gained. I mentioned ASEAN, but really, it is all of Asia. I was at a lunch today where Minister Maris (Sangiampongsa), he was speaking as well, and he talked about upstream, mainstream and downstream. And when you look at Asia as a whole, there are 2 billion people you could be looking at, who could be end users, users of AI, different outputs and technologies. So what we do here, while ASEAN will play its part, also has to look at the bigger Asia picture with a huge population at its disposal.

Haslinda Amin: I want to take a look at the next frontier of AI. You know, Martha, you started as a fintech, and your services have expanded. When you take a look at a five-year timeframe, how do you see AI further bridging the divide between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have nots?

Martha Sazon: A big part that AI can provide is personalisation, so that issues that we see in each segment are very different – it is different for the young, for the ageing, or the rich and the poor. They have different needs, and AI will help us tailor those solutions for them in the same way that AI would also help us further earn the trust of our customers and keep our platform secure.

So what we have been doing is that we have been working with other global institutions to really advance AI, not just for our customers but even internally. So enterprise solutions enabled by AI. An example of what we are seeing, in terms of collection efficiencies. As we get to millions of customers that we need to reach, we need to find a way to be more efficient. So, AI is now helping us but enabling, supporting and reinforcing our collectors so that we can do more. And by doing that, people get reminded. Because we know that people want to pay, but they just need to get reminded. So that’s where AI gets applied.

It is a lot of collaborating with existing human resources. Employees will not be eliminated, definitely. But the way we see it is further making more intelligent the services that we offer.

A big part also is international. There are 10 to 12 million Filipinos globally. How do we reach them by just using traditional ways? So we would need AI, because each country would have their own regulations, their own unique situations that we need to deal with. So AI would further help us on that, from machine learning, deep learning to large language models as well. So those things would help us make our operations more efficient, so we can do more, reach more and be more personalised in dealing with our customers.

Haslinda Amin: Angela, in China, how do you see AI, perhaps, being implemented, perhaps in fields like healthcare?

Angela Wang: For the previous topic about the reskilling of the people, the labourers, actually, people are saying AI may destroy a lot of jobs. But basically, if you read the data, especially the new reports, even considering the displacement of workers over the next five years, there are still around 79 million new jobs being created.

Also especially in China, another serious social problem is the aging society as compared to Singapore and Thailand. Today, there are more than 600 million people of the population above 65 years of age. In the next 10 years, the number is expected to grow about 30%. If we are talking about reskilling our labour force, we need to not only think about workers, but also consider the seniors, to not let them be left behind by the AI wave. 

We need to let them learn about AI. The good thing is, one of the charms of AI is the AI agent, that can help the seniors to communicate with the machine which is very disruptive for the human-machine interfaces and beneficial for the aging people.

I also mentioned that we run three private universities that used to be for younger people in IT-related majors. We have now established a new school called Pheonix School, which is for the seniors. They come into the school to learn about AI, using AI to create paintings – very beautiful – and also to tell their own stories from their memories, which make touching articles. In the past, they could not do that. But now using AI, they can. That’s the way we can help older people in the society to catch up with AI, and help people to use technology. That’s the sort of responsibility of companies like Neusoft.

Haslinda Amin: Suffice to say that there’s immense potential in AI and if you take a look at a 5, 10 year timeframe, AI has the potential to provide a new growth model for countries like Singapore and Thailand. How are you looking at it? Could AI help countries in Asia leapfrog because we’re known to be fast followers, can we be global leaders. How do we see that playing out? Minister Gan.

DPM Gan: Let me just say that it’s not geographically confined to Asia. I think it depends on how fast you’re prepared to embrace AI, and how fast you are able to manage, or how well you are able to manage the transition. I understand that there will be a lot of new jobs created in the field of AI, digitalisation, data storage, and new energy but it’s important to understand these require new skills that the workers of today may not have. Training and reskilling, as you mentioned, are critical to make sure that the transition is a successful one. In this process, some may be affected, some may actually benefit from it. The key is how we can make sure to minimise the impact on those who may be adversely affected, so that all of us can progress in an inclusive way and benefit from AI.

I can imagine that in time to come, even training can be AI-based so that you tailor and customise the training needs specifically to the worker. Everyone learns differently and everyone has different skillsets. AI with data will be able to allow you to customise – the key is to customise, personalisation. So if you can customise the training to individual workers, it will be very effective. And I think this will help the transition. But it’s still a long way to go. The potential is still enormous. The key is whether or not countries can come together and work together to fully take advantage of the potential of AI, and what AI can bring to us.

If countries work on their own, I think it will be much slower. That’s why within ASEAN, we are very keen to come together to look at digitalisation, to see how AI can help us leapfrog. But I’m quite sure that ASEAN is not the only region – many other regions are also looking at how they can leverage on AI to leapfrog ahead of others. It’s a competition among all of us, but I hope that it’s a positive competition with cooperation and collaboration, sharing our experience and knowledge so that we can all progress together in an inclusive way.

Haslinda Amin: It’s quite amazing if you think about it. If GCash is able to help its people – we’re talking about a developing economy to go cashless, cardless – it’s kind of high-tech and cool. If you take a look at Thailand’s perspective and context, in terms of a new growth model, perhaps the digital economy is going to drive it further in the future, versus sectors like tourism.

Pichai Naripthaphan: Referring to Mr Gan about the upskilling, for Thailand, we are not much of engineers, but we are open for smart people to come to Thailand – ‘digital nomad’ is our policy. We want to welcome all the smart people to come to Thailand. The truth is, there are so many digital nomads coming to Thailand each year. According to information gathered, digital nomads say that their capital is in Estonia, but they say that the ‘digital heaven’ is in Bangkok. We have shopping, we have food, we have sea, we have sand, we have mountains, and durians. Our 5G and broadband are state-of-the-art. I truly that believe in Thailand, internet and communications and – we are going to establish the low-orbit satellite soon – so we are quite ready for the digital nomads, so we are looking forward to that.

Talking about healthcare, in Thailand we are a medical hub, as you know. We try to implement AI on healthcare too. We gather information to try and create our accessiblity for healthcare in the future. I truly believe that leapfrog is what we are looking for. Who has the most data will rule in this game. It’s important to have the most data because AI won’t be efficient if you don’t have enough data. If you can accumulate the most data, you can translate into more AI, and you can leapfrog already. Like I said, we would like to join hands with all the ASEAN countries – like Singapore, because they have all the smart people there.

Milton Cheng: One of the things, to Minister Pichai, whichever country contains the data, essentially most of what AI will support is borderless. One of the things that we did is a survey in terms of business risk and people are very concerned about security risks, data privacy risks, all the way up and down the supply chain. Back to the point we talked about of us having a coordinated regional approach, one of the things that will help ASEAN do that is accepting who is going to be doing what within the region, a coordinated set of rules that is consistent, that supports businesses to survive and work efficiently, but also gives the assurance that data privacy concerns are met, cybersecurity is looked after as well. That’s where the bringing together of the regulatory framework is quite important.

Haslinda Amin: To wrap it up, I just want to bring in Angela and Martha. We talk about leapfrogging – what would help? What catalysts, what incentives would help Asia and ASEAN leapfrog?

Martha Sazon: I think the discussions around collaboration would really help. We’ve seen good starts to that. For example, the ability to be inter-operable in payments, that’s a good start because that means the data is also being protected at the same time and there’s discussion around it. So, collaboration would help leapfrog. But also, going more basic, would be connectivity. We can’t go forward if the connectivity isn’t equal among the countries in the region. What I am very hopeful and excited about is actually the culture in Asia, the buzz, the energy and the agility of the people here. We’re very open and agile in terms of the new things we are excited to adopt, and we adopt quickly. We try and if we fall, we get up and try it again. I see that in the different countries in Southeast Asia, in Asia. That cultural mindset, at the same time, collaboration, would help leapfrog us. 

Angela Wang: I agree with that. The application itself is really how the fusion of the AI technology with the industry’s demand and the individual’s demand. Because of that, that will accelerate the integration of the algorithm and help the AI to grow better. The private sector and the government working together, will help all the regulations be in place as well as the privacy and data protection. I believe this will help Asia to leapfrog in a safer way. 

Haslinda Amin: On that very optimistic note, we have had a very good conversation. Martha, Milton, Minister Gan, Angela, Minister Pichai, thank you for your insights today.