Building the AI Engineer Nation — with Josephine Teo, Minister of Digital Development and Information, Singapore

**Alessio** (0:04)
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Latent Space Podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO in Residence and Decibel Partners, and I'm joined by my co-hostess, Wix, founder of SmallAI.

**Swyx** (0:13)
Hey, everyone. This is a very, very special episode. We have here Mr. Josephine Teo from Singapore. Welcome.

**Josephine Teo** (0:19)
Hi, Sean, and hi, Alessio. Thank you for having me. Of course.

**Swyx** (0:23)
You are the Minister for Digital Development and Information and Second Minister for Home Affairs. And we are meeting here at RACE, which is effectively your agency. Maybe we want to explain a little bit about what Singapore is doing in AI.

**Josephine Teo** (0:34)
Well, we've had an AI strategy at the national level for some years now. And about two years ago, when generative AI became so prominent, we thought it was about time for us to refresh our national AI strategy.
And it's not unusual on such occasions for us to consult widely. We want to talk to people who are familiar with the field. We want to talk to people who are active as practitioners. And we also want to talk to people in Singapore who have an interest in seeing the AI ecosystem develop. So when we put all these together, we discovered something else by chance. And it was really a bonus. This was the fact that there were already Singaporeans that were active in the AI space, particularly in the US, particularly in the Bay Area. And one of the exciting things for us was, how could we also consult these Singaporeans who clearly still have a passion for Singapore. They do care about what happens back home, and they want to contribute to it. So that's how Raze came about. And Raze actually preceded the publication of the refresh of our National AI Strategy, which took place in December last year. So the inputs of the participants from Raze helped us to sharpen what we thought would be important in building up the AI ecosystem. And also with the encouragement of participants at Raze, primarily Singaporeans who were doing great work in the US, we decided to raise our ambitions, literally.

**Swyx** (2:19)
Yeah, that's a good name.

**Josephine Teo** (2:19)
That's why we say AI for the public good, recognizing the fact that commercial interests will certainly drive exciting developments in the industry space. But keep in mind, there is a need to make sure that AI serves the public good. And we say for Singapore and the world. So the idea is that experiments that are carried out in Singapore, things that are scaled up in Singapore, or potentially could have contributions elsewhere in the world. And so AI for the public good for Singapore and the world. That's how it came about.

**Alessio** (2:51)
I was listening to some of your previous interviews, and even the choice of the name development in the ministry name was very specific. You mentioned naming is your ethos. Can you explain maybe a bit about what the ministry does, which is not simply funding R&D, but it's also thinking about how to apply these technologies in industry and just maybe give people an overview of it since there's not really an equivalent in the US.

**Josephine Teo** (3:13)
Yeah. So when people talk about our Smart Nation efforts, it was helpful in articulating a few key pillars. We talked about one pillar being a vibrant digital economy. We also talk about a stable digital society because digital technologies, the way in which they are used, can sometimes cause divisions in society or entrench polarization. They can also have the potential of causing social upheaval. So when we talked about stable digital society, that was what we had in mind. How do you preserve cohesion? Then we said that in this domain, government has to be progressive too. You can't expect the rest of Singapore to digitalize, and yet the government is falling behind. So a progressive digital government is another very important pillar. And underpinning all of this has to be comprehensive digital security. There is of course cyber security, but there is also how individuals feel safe in the digital domain, whether as users on social media, or if they are using devices and they are using services that are delivered digitally. So when we talk about these four pillars of a smart nation, people get it.
And when we then asked ourselves, what is the appropriate way to think of the ministry? We used to be known as the Ministry of Communications and Information. And we had been doing all this digital stuff without actually putting it into our name. So when we eventually decided to rename the ministry, there were a couple of options to choose from. We could have gone for digital technologies. We could have gone for digital advancement. We could have gone for digital innovation. But ultimately, we decided on digital development because it wasn't the technologies, the advancements or the innovation that we cared about. They are important, but we're really more interested in their impact to society, impact to communities. So how do we shape those developments? How do we achieve a digital experience that is trustworthy? How do we make sure that everyone, not just individuals who are savvy from the get-go in digital engagements, how does everyone in society, regardless of age, regardless of background, also feel that they have a sense of progression, that embracing technology brings benefits to them? And we also believe that if you don't pay attention to it, then you might not consciously apply the use of technology to bring people together. And you may passively just allow society to break apart without being...