Beyond the Mekong | Society | Southeast Asia

AI, Scams, the Law, and Governance: A Conversation With David Tan

How are Southeast Asia’s governments facing up to the challenges of AI?

Governments across Southeast Asia are struggling with the arrival of artificial intelligence, both its endless possibilities that can improve everyday life and the threats posed by organized crime and the scam industries that have taken hold in the region.

Singapore-based David Tan, co-director of the Centre for Technology, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & the Law, says the predominant issues evolve around what he calls the three Ps: permanence, proliferation, and perniciousness. 

“We only need to regulate what’s truly important – what’s really pernicious, that proliferates, and has that permanent digital memory,” he said, adding: “Intimate sexual images, child abuse images, whether digital or not, that should be a priority.”

Tan, who also heads Intellectual Property at the EW Barker Centre for Law & Business at the National University of........

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