At Capacity Asia in Singapore, Saf Malik, senior reporter at Capacity Media was joined by Choi, Oliver Curtis, co-founder and co-CEO at Sustainable Metal Cloud and Eugene Seo, managing director of data centres at Capitaland to discuss how the industry would embrace AI for a more competitive future.
Choi’s comments come as the EU Parliament and Council negotiators reached a provisional agreement on an Artificial Intelligence Act last week.
That Act aims to ensure that fundamental rights, democracy, the rule of law and environmental sustainability are protected from “high-risk AI”.
Choi compared AI to nuclear power, noting that it is a powerful technology that can also be used in a harmful way.
“And it’s not just governments but the industry and the ecosystem that needs to set some expectations [on AI],” he said.
Curtis agreed with that sentiment, believing that regulation will follow any new technology, particularly one that is as new and potentially harmful as AI.
He was, however, keen to note that AI isn’t a new phenomenon and has been around for longer than the commencement of the AI "boom" sparked by mainstream interest in ChatGPT.
“Siri has been around for many years,” he told the audience at Capacity Asia - noting that Apple had installed AI software in smartphones a long time ago.
As for cross-border regulation, Curtis was unsurprised by the news coming out of the EU Parliament and Council and thinks that with time, regulation will continue to take hold across several regions.
“It [regulation] will flow through different forms and interpretations depending on what region you’re in,” he said.
With that said, Seo noted that governments are concerned about disinformation caused by AI and this will only be accentuated by the upcoming US elections.
