At a conference in Singapore on Tuesday, ministers from around the world mused that they may have missed the chance to regulate AI effectively.

In a keynote at Singapore International Cyber Week (SICW), the city-state’s coordinating minister for national security, Teo Chee Hean, drew parallels between the evolution of the internet and AI.

“When the internet first emerged, there was a belief, hope, that ready access to information would lead to a flowering of ideas, a flourishing of the day, and the best ideas would float to the top and be recognized and implemented by everyone,” proclaimed Teo.

Now, Teo lamented, “There is widespread recognition that it has become a source of disinformation, division, and danger that can and is being exploited.” In his telling, nations recognized problems – but too late to avert damage.

“We should try not to repeat these mistakes with new technologies,” he asserted – and named AI as one of those emerging technologies and an enabler of cyber threats.

But as AI services are available across borders, regulating it requires hard-to-arrange global cooperation.

“This means that international cooperation will be essential for us to resolve many of the common issues that we face in the digital domain,” Teo mused.

And with each country acting in its own interest, amid global geopolitical complexity, finding common ground is hard – as illustrated by the fact that Ukraine’s deputy minister for Foreign Affairs and a director of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs appeared on successive panels at the event.

Ukrainian minister HE Anton Demokhin was blunt.

“I would like to say that I would love to approach the situation in the world now and in our country with the great philosophies and teachings for compassion, but reality is sometimes harsh, and strong response to misbehavior must happen before steering in the right direction may become the opportunity,” Demokhin argued.

Meanwhile, New Zealand minister Judith Collins revealed her nation had only just this year signed up to an AI strategy – and is yet to frame AI regulations.

“What we have said is we don’t have enough AI being used for us to regulate anything at the moment,” stated Collins. She stressed that while like-minded nations should work together, they should individually look after their own citizens.

“In these areas of technology, government is always playing catch up,” offered Andrew Charlton, from Australia’s special envoy for Cyber Security and Digital Resilience. “The challenge that we have in this space is that there is so much to catch up.”

His vision for AI regulation reflects a similar process to crossing the street – an action all participants find intuitively embedded in themselves.

But to get there, there needs to be more cooperation than competition, he alleged.

Brunei’s minister of Transport and Infocommunications Shamhary Mustapha seemed to agree as he stressed consensus on AI regulation is vital to the ASEAN trading bloc.

Mustapha asserted it was difficult for people to disagree on principals, and from there it was easier to work on specifics of norms and standards. He claimed this is ASEAN’s tactic.

“I think this approach has been taken by ASEAN with respect to various emerging technologies,” he explained.

For smaller countries like those in the ASEAN bloc, banding together is a vital strategy on regulation setting.

“Smaller nations may or may not be supported when they’re under attack, depending on who wants to exercise their veto power,” conceded Collins.

But it’s not just having the voice of small nations drowned out among other countries that is the worry. It’s also Big Tech – a stakeholder that carries as much weight as many nations.

Singapore’s Cyber Security Agency commissioner David Koh stressed that annual revenue of Big Tech companies is more than many countries’ annual gross domestic product (GDP).

As for AI governance and ethics, Ivan John Uy from the Philippines’ Department of Information and Communications Technology said he didn’t think it was too late – at least not for ASEAN.

“I don’t think it’s too late. We are at the right time because the technology actually is ever evolving. And what we’ve seen with technology is it’s really a moving target, and therefore we can come in at any time,” he concluded. ®