As AI regulation looms, should Asia follow West’s lead and risk ‘killing innovation’?
- Experts say pegging regulations to countries like the UK – due to hold a global AI summit – could ‘freeze out’ firms from nations like China or India
- What’s right for the West when it comes to regulating the multibillion-dollar industry ‘isn’t necessarily right for Hong Kong, Singapore’, they say
But analysts say any laws regulating the technology must not also stunt its development, especially in Asia where many remote regions are underserved by public services at present and the innovative use of AI could transform lives.
“Hubs like Singapore need to put in place basic guidelines and guardrails around the misuse of these technologies,” he said. “However, without really understanding these technologies’ future trajectory, there is a risk of overregulation or misplaced rules killing innovation.”
The city state’s Personal Data Protection Commission, established in 2013, currently regulates information privacy and the use of AI in Singapore, including overseeing developers and other companies.
Lee Wan Sie, director of artificial intelligence at Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority – an autonomous government agency under the Ministry of Communications and Information – told CNBC on June 19 that the city state was not looking to regulate AI.
“At this stage, it is quite clear that we want to be able to learn from the industry. We will learn how AI is being used before we decide if more needs to be done from a regulatory front,” she said, adding that regulation may be introduced at a later stage.
Rocky road ahead
Copying other regions’ regulations would also make it harder for Asian nations to customise laws to local needs, he said, which may hinder domestic companies’ development.
It’s also unlikely that India will rush to join an international framework any time soon, although industry body the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) did release guidelines this month for the use of AI by developers and researchers, according to insiders.
The South Asian nation has no specific laws for AI but the government is poised to release a draft of its Digital India Act, which is intended to replace the old Information Technology Act that came into play in 2000.
It’s not yet known what the proposed law could mean for AI, but IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said earlier this month that any regulation will be to protect against “user harm”.
“It is likely that in the near future, India will regulate AI with a light-touch approach via existing laws, rather than going for AI-specific regulation,” said Siddharth Mahajan, a partner at Athena Legal, a New Delhi law firm.
According to a NASSCOM report this month, the adoption of AI could add US$500 billion to India’s economy by 2025.
“India has attracted companies and positioned itself as a potential service hub for AI,” said Soumen Datta, a business analytics partner at BDO Digital, which consults on artificial intelligence. However, with the global trend towards AI regulation, India “will also need to adapt its approach in the future”, he said.
Most Southeast Asian nations currently have in place a mix of voluntary codes of practice and industry-specific rules, regional lawyers told This Week in Asia.
Lauren Hurcombe, a Hong Kong-based partner specialising in technology at global law firm DLA Piper, said it was “increasingly clear that light touch regulation is unlikely to be sufficient” given the degree of misuse of AI systems, particularly generative AI, which can produce text, pictures and other media in response to prompts.
Potential misuse
Others say that delays were always going to be inevitable in the process of drafting and coordinating global regulations.
John Collins, head of AI for Asia at FTI Consulting, gave the example of banking regulations, which took decades to become harmonised international rules after the first Basel Accords were drawn up in Switzerland in 1988, and are still evolving.
“There is no one-size-fits-all approach that can be considered universally optimal. Put another way, what is right for the UK is not necessarily right for Hong Kong and Singapore.”
But he added that appropriate regulations were generally considered necessary.
Governments need to be aware of the potential legal issues around the use of AI and look at potential solutions, another lawyer said.
“Generative AI is only as good as the data it learns from, and the use of such AI raises important questions as to whether such learning and the output of the AI potentially infringes the intellectual property of others,” said Nicholas Lauw, a Singapore-based partner in technology and digital assets at RPC Premier Law.
“At the same time, people need to be aware that the use of AI may expose them and their employers to legal risks.”
While Britain is now talking about setting up “strong guardrails” for AI, a UK White Paper on the technology published on March 29 suggested a relatively light touch approach, Lauw said, noting that it would also be best to see what comes out of Britain’s summit to be sure of the direction of the proposed regulatory framework.
“Given that Rishi Sunak is seeking to find a ‘global’ solution, he might produce a moderate solution worth adopting,” he added.