For years, commentators have likened data to oil, one of the world's most important commodities. Just as vast oil reserves brought wealth and power to the world's oil-producing nations and fossil fuel companies in the 20th century, data-rich countries and companies will be able to leverage that resource in the 21st century.
This argument has taken on even more meaning with the rise of AI: Large countries like the US and China can train AI models with vast amounts of data, but smaller economies with less data on hand can't keep up.
However, Singapore's Minister for Digital Development and Information, Josephine Teo, luck Speaking at the Brainstorming AI conference in Singapore on Tuesday, he said it was a mistake to compare data to oil when talking about how countries use it.
Unlike oil, which is a finite resource that disappears once extracted and used, data can be “recombined” over and over again, she said. “Data actually becomes more useful when it's reused in different contexts.”
Singapore adopted an AI strategy in 2019 and is now looking to build on its existing strengths as a trade and travel hub to ramp up development of the new technology. “We're not trying to become an AI powerhouse, and we don't need to be,” Mr Teo said. luck In a recent feature article on the country's AI plans.
Teo suggested on Tuesday that one way Singapore can access the data it needs is through its vibrant economy. “If you think about the size of GDP and use that as an indicator of the breadth and depth of activities taking place in Singapore, and every single one of those activities generates a data point, maybe the data is not as small as we think,” she explained.
“Tropical” Data Center
Still, Singapore's minister noted some potential challenges to the country's AI hopes. “In any new field, the talent pool is always a concern,” she said. “The talent pool is not broad enough, it's not deep enough.”
But she disputed suggestions that the country's temporary pause on data center construction had hurt its attractiveness as an AI hub.
In 2019, the Singapore government temporarily suspended approvals for new data centers over concerns about land use and power consumption, leading operators to flee elsewhere, including neighboring Malaysia, where the company now attracts billions of dollars in investment from tech giants including Microsoft and Google.
However, Teo claimed that Singapore, with 70 data centers, has one of the world's “densest data center capacity”.
“If you compare our data center capacity to the size of our GDP, and compare it to, say, Japan or China, ours is actually much larger,” she argued.
While Singapore is open to building more data centers, “the question is how do we do that while meeting our commitment to a net-zero pathway,” she asked.
The answer is “Tropical [data center] “If you're running a data center in a tropical climate, do you really need to run it at that low of a temperature? Or [is it that] Is it actually okay if it's one degree higher?
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