CNA938 Rewind - Singapore's large language model game steps up
CNA938 Rewind
Play
Local large language model Sea-Lion has gained much attention in South-East Asia – with around 235,000 downloads so far. AI Singapore researchers are now planning to add voice recognition to the programme later this year. Lance Alexander and Daniel Martin find out more with Darius Liu, Head of Partnerships & Strategy, AI Singapore.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNA
15 hours ago
- CNA
CNA938 Rewind - Servicing, parts and maintenance; Do we have the ecosystem for EV adoption?
CNA938 Rewind Play Is Singapore's infrastructure equipped enough to take its embrace of electric vehicle (EV) technology even further? Lance Alexander and Daniel Martin learn more from Terence Siew, President and Co-Founder of the Electric Vehicle Association of Singapore.
Business Times
a day ago
- Business Times
South-east Asia's tech unicorns may look more like banks in the future
[SINGAPORE] A couple of years ago, banking would not have been the avenue people imagined South-east Asia's tech unicorns would take in pursuit of growth and sustainability. Now, most of South-east Asia's tech unicorns have a bank of sorts under their belt – Grab has GXS Bank in Singapore, GX Bank in Malaysia and Superbank in Indonesia, while Sea has MariBank in Singapore and SeaBank in Indonesia and the Philippines. Sea also operates Ryt Bank as a joint venture with YTL Group. Even GoTo has backed Bank Jago in Indonesia. The banking sector is highly regulated, while tech startups, in contrast, often operate in regulatory grey areas where tech can disrupt current business models. The inroads that these tech-owned banks have made into their markets have been remarkable. For instance, the total deposits for Grab's GXS and GX banks have grown from US$479 million in the first quarter of 2024 to US$1.3 billion in Q1 2025. The three banks owned by Grab are projected to be collectively profitable by Q4 2026, according to Alex Hungate, chief operating officer of Grab. MariBank is also on track for profitability within the Monetary Authority of Singapore's digital bank licence framework of five years from launch. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Given these growth trends, there is potential for banking and financial services to make up the bulk of Sea and Grab's businesses. Currently, financial services make up 9.6 per cent of Grab's total revenue for Q1 2025, and 16.2 per cent of Sea's Q1 2025 revenue. These numbers can quickly multiply, as Grab and Sea ramp up their banking operations in emerging markets such as Indonesia. Almost half of all adults in that country are unbanked or underbanked, and about 36 million adults remain unbanked in the Philippines. Running their banks as digital banks has helped to cut costs in serving unbanked and underbanked customers. Technology is making risk management processes such as know-your-customer and credit modelling – in an environment where information is not readily available – cheaper compared with traditional banks. The opportunities in South-east Asia also include the many micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) that Grab and Sea's banks serve. Traditional banks incur high costs to serve this segment of business customers. Meanwhile, the new digital banks by Grab and Sea have also utilised technology to serve their retail customers, thus bringing costs down. It also helps that some of the MSME customers are also Grab or Sea merchants, allowing their banks to access data that traditional banks would not be privy to. The number of orders on Grab's food-delivery platform and Sea's Shopee platform gives the tech unicorns an edge in understanding these customers' monthly cash flow and business performance. Rising interest rates in the last few years have also allowed digital banks to make money off deposits. Coupled with this edge that Grab and Sea have over traditional banks, the foundation has been laid for their banking businesses to potentially overtake the original business units in terms of revenue. Grab's mobility and food-delivery businesses are highly dependent on the human factor, given the involvement of drivers, riders and food merchants. Similarly, Sea's Shopee business is equally dependent on merchants being willing to continue to sell on the platform. This is a factor that both Grab and Sea have less control over; they can influence such actors with incentives and subsidies, but this may result in inefficiencies. In conventional banking, once a customer is acquired, there is a level of stickiness that comes with participating in financial services transactions. This is unlike customers of delivery and ride-hailing services, who are driven by the lowest price, or with the riders, who may jump ship once the commission percentage changes. Grab and Sea would also wield more control over the supply side of the equation, compared with ride-hailing or e-commerce. With these factors in mind, it will pay to watch this space, to see if the next incarnation of Grab and Sea will be as banks rather than tech players.
Straits Times
28-05-2025
- Straits Times
Safety measures can spur AI's growth, not stifle it: Panellists
Professor Dawn Song (right) from the University of California, Berkeley at a fireside chat with Professor Simon Chesterman, senior director of AI governance at AI Singapore, at the Asia Tech x Singapore conference on May 28. PHOTO: IMDA SINGAPORE - Safety measures can foster artificial intelligence (AI) innovations by avoiding unintended harm and building public trust, said Professor Dawn Song from the University of California, Berkeley. Likening AI safety measures to seat belts in the early days of driving, she said that these guardrails will not stifle AI innovation in the same way that seat belts do not slow down the development of the automotive industry. Rather, seat belts have fostered more confident driving, contributing to advancements in overall automotive safety and development, she said. Prof Song was speaking at a fireside chat about securing AI's future with science-based safety on May 28 at the Asia Tech x Singapore conference held at Capella Singapore. 'AI safety... can help you to innovate faster... (and also) in a safer way... It is not there to slow things down,' says Prof Song. AI safety was a common theme at the conference, where many speakers acknowledged that its harms have to be minimised either through regulation or some form of global consensus. Past cases of AI biases that caused massive embarrassments and harmed minority groups offered some lessons. A 2016 investigation led by US publication ProPublica found that a criminal justice algorithm used by the US courts wrongly flagged black defendants as high risk for reoffending, nearly twice the rate of white defendants. In 2018, e-commerce giant Amazon scrapped an internal hiring tool after discovering it was biased against women. The system, trained on resumes submitted over a decade - many of which came from men - systematically downgraded applications that included the word 'women's,' such as 'women's chess club.' The tool was never deployed beyond testing. Calling for responsible innovation, Prof Song said: 'We want to innovate. We want to actually make the world a better place. But we can only do that if we can ensure the safety and security of the AI systems we are building and deploying.' Dr Samir Menon, CEO of Dexterity AI, which builds dexterous robot solutions, pointed out that the safety risks with physical AI can be significantly higher compared with AI chatbots. Physical AI refers to hardware that interacts with the real world through sensors and actuators, and includes autonomous vehicles and surgical robots. While software can cause online harms, hardware failures can be disastrous, he said speaking at a panel titled I, Robot - Future of Embodied AI at the same event on May 28. 'Once a robot moves in the real world, it can bump into people, or knock things over or worse,' he said. In 2023, a robot taxi operated by US self-driving company Cruise ran over a pedestrian who had already been hit by another vehicle, dragging her for several metres and causing serious injuries. A year later in South Korea, a delivery robot made by robot delivery service Neubility collided with a moving car at a pedestrian crossing, damaging the vehicle and sparking debate over who should be held accountable when such machines go rogue. Speaking at the same panel, Stanford University's assistant professor of computer science Jiajun Wu noted that there are inconsistencies in the performance of robots in different research settings . Besides, most robots are trained in controlled environments and applying to real-world settings can be challenging, Dr Samir said. 'If you deploy 10 robots and need to cordon off five meters around each of them, your whole building ends up looking like a robot zoo. That's just not viable,' Dr Samir added. True progress, he said, lies in shared spaces. For instance, robots must be taught how to handle tools safely or carry drinks without spilling to safely co-exist with humans. Their training must be done in a real-world setting. 'If we can pull that off in the next four to five years, that's going to be a fantastic step up,' said Dr Samir. To scale AI deployments safely, clear standards are needed. 'If I train an AI on a robot with one type of hand, and then change the hand or switch to two arms, will it still work? Right now, we just don't know,' he said. Prof Song echoed this, noting that AI systems often lack transparency and systematic evaluation. She added that the broader AI policy landscape remains fragmented, with limited consensus on best practices. Most AI firms still prioritise performance over safety, investing relatively little in risk mitigation. Prof Song said that the AI industry can draw lessons from the cybersecurity sector, which is shifting away from treating safety as an afterthought. Now, many systems are built with security measures already built in. Similarly, AI can be designed to be safe at the onset, she said. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
