In Parliament this week: the government’s in-principle support to institutionalise the office of the Leader of the Opposition; the government’s defence of high salaries for political office holders (soon subject to review); debate about mandatory retrenchment benefits, with the PAP’s view, a rebuttal from the WP, and one from the (unelected) PSP; and the WP’s suggestion to Make (Singapore) Equities Great Again.
Other news this week included: a commentary by The Straits Times on Singapore crossing the “super-aged” threshold this year; the prevalence of “problematic [video] gaming” among young adults; Singapore’s new space agency; an update on the Nipah virus; KF Seetoh, referencing the closure of Warong Nasi Pariaman, reiterating the problems with rent and other costs for the F&B industry; “Migrant workers should not be made invisible to be accepted”, HOME’s response to the MOM’s view on shared spaces; the criminal trial of Goh Jin Hian, son of Goh Chok Tong, former prime minister, begins; the AirFish, a water-skimming craft, will soon begin operations between Singapore and Batam (no more bumpy rides?); and the best reason why you shouldn’t take your impression of Bruce Lee too far.
Society: Will robots worsen our divides?
From Davos to downtown, Singaporeans have been contemplating the impact AI will have on societal equity. In a long brown jacket and set against the stark whiteness of the Swiss ski town, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, president, told the GZERO’s Ian Bremmer that countries must cooperate to avoid AI’s worst excesses while harnessing its transformative powers. The Cold War’s arms race was fought between states, he said, but today’s is led by private companies moving at blinding speeds. “Whilst you can count nuclear warheads, it’s much more difficult to count algorithms and the manyfold effects of algorithms,” he added, citing misinformation and cyberwarfare.
But he believes there’s sufficient “common interest” to disseminate productivity improvements so that “the market grows for all the dominant powers in AI”. Smaller countries must be at the table, he asserted, because “sometimes it’s the most vulnerable countries that are the first to want to institute guardrails and the major powers eventually come on board.” For Singapore specifically, Shanmugaratnam spoke about the need to distribute its benefits “up and down the workforce…a challenge everywhere in the world. And it’s not obvious we’re going to succeed.”
Separately, HSBC Singapore hosted a panel discussion to launch “AI and the Future of Women in the Workplace”, a report by NINEby9, a Singapore-based not-for-profit gender advocacy group. It asserts that AI’s penetration puts women at relatively greater professional risk through a “double exposure”. First, there are more of them in jobs, like clerical and administrative work, which are at greater risk of automation: 33.8 percent versus 28.8 percent for men in Singapore. (Other studies suggest that women are underrepresented in occupations with the highest exposure to AI, while overrepresented in some, like cleaners and helpers, with less exposure.)
Second, women are not as well positioned as men to capitalise on roles where AI is advancing careers. Reasons range from traditional underrepresentation in STEM scholarship to women’s relatively more thoughtful, deliberate adoption of AI. “The people who get noticed are those who experiment first, not those who are the most accurate,” said a technology executive from Malaysia. Another finding is that Gen Z women are affected the most, because “AI adoption is advancing fastest in the places where early careers often start”. The next generation, it contends, “faces a broken career ladder before they even begin the climb.” A host of recommendations to mitigate all this include nurturing a more inclusive AI learning culture, and aligning HR and tech.
The Economist last week sought to dampen fears of “a tsunami” hitting the labour market, as the IMF’s head recently suggested. Among its reasons are the so-called “jagged frontier” of AI: making complex medical diagnoses, for instance, while still struggling with hallucinations, fabrications and other issues; the complexity of most professional roles: only around four percent of occupations use AI across three-quarters or more of tasks, according to research from Anthropic; and, like with any new technology, the fact that it’s still in its infancy and its impact will only be felt in time. “It’s like we’re all accountants and Microsoft Excel was invented last weekend,” quipped OpenAI’s chairman. Regardless of when and how the Singaporean labour market will be affected by AI, it’s laudable, for a society where addressing equity is often a reactive afterthought, that such conversations are even occurring—and at the highest levels.
