Tan Wu Meng on building an inclusive and safe digital society

If your family owns a car and there is a design issue leading to bodily harm or loss of your savings, you know what the manufacturer must do. Financial institutions, banks, telcos and technology firms should shoulder responsibility in the digital world the way tangible goods providers do in the physical world. MP Tan Wu Meng made this call in Parliament on Wednesday (Jan 10), stressing the need to see through the eyes of consumers and make sure that firms in the digital space treat consumer protection the same way that tangible products are handled. He also called on the Government to double down its investments in capabilities for artificial intelligence (AI) to make Singapore a tech powerhouse. Dr Tan also highlighted the need to tackle deepfakes, saying if people cannot tell what is real and not real, there would not even be a functioning democracy. The Government needs to deal with this preemptively, he said. It should look at ways of electronically watermarking content as proof of “human” when transacting with someone on an AI bot. He also stressed the need to continue moving upstream to ensure that young people are more aware of the risks of deepfakes and how subtle they can be.