Singapore’s AI ambitions generate more questions than answers

Welcome to On the Rise! Delivered every Tuesday via email and through the Tech in Asia website, this free newsletter breaks down the biggest stories and trends in emerging tech. If you’re not a subscriber, get access by registering here.

Hello there,

With Christmas just around the corner, I’ve been gift shopping for my nieces and nephews.

It can be taxing to choose what presents to give, but it has gotten easier over the last few years. If one of them gets a particular toy, the others have to have it too. So I end up getting the same gifts for everyone to prevent them from squabbling.

This can be the case with adults as well, but in a more subtle way. Advertising and social media, for example, have capitalized on this human impulse to crave the same products, experience, and life that everyone else has to make us buy more things we don’t really need.

Earlier this month, Singapore hopped on the generative AI bandwagon by investing S$70 million (US$52 million) to build a large language model (LLM) for Southeast Asian languages. The project is expected to launch within the next two years.

This comes at a time when private companies such as Alibaba, VinAI, Wiz.ai, and even OpenAI’s GPT-4 have developed LLMs to support several local languages in the region. Given how many contenders there are in this space, did Singapore join at the right moment or is it too late?

My colleague Huong explores this in our first Big Story. She talked to several experts who questioned whether Singapore’s move will pay off, considering the extensive resources required for training and developing LLMs.

Our second Big Story is also about moves that are worth it. Budi checks out whether TurtleTree’s efforts to produce lactoferrin, a milk-based protein, can generate profits. The Singapore-based biotech firm is preparing for a US launch in the first quarter of 2024.

Finally, Simon breaks down which investors in the Middle East are pumping in funding into Asia’s startup ecosystem in this week’s Making Waves.

P.S. This will be our last newsletter for the year, as the team will be taking a short break. But fear not, we’ll be back in your inbox on January 9, 2024.

— Collin

THE BIG STORIES

1️⃣Is Singapore’s LLM project timely or too late?

Image credit: Made by Tech in Asia using Midjourney

Making Waves

FYI

NEWS YOU SHOULD KNOW