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Singapore minister reveals why human touch still important in AI era
Foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan cautions against overdependence on large-language models to solve every problem
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Even as Singapore positions itself at the frontier of AI technology, human intelligence still remains critical, according to the city state’s foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan.
“We should beware of just trying to throw every problem, and every step in a solution, at a large-language model (LLM),” he said on Saturday at the AI Engineer conference, referring to deep-learning technology behind generative AI services such as ChatGPT.
Balakrishnan warned against discarding traditional AI models programmed by humans, citing the limitations of the LLM – such as high costs and finite computing power.
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Addressing an audience of engineers, founders and operators at the conference in Singapore, the former ophthalmologist said there was still a role for rule-based expert systems that simulated human knowledge.
The human brain was often far more efficient than “the energy-gobbling systems which we have today”, he said.
However, that did not mean people should shy away from AI, Balakrishnan said, noting that it was now easier to access the technology.
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