SINGAPORE – Singapore needs several lines of defence to keep pace with possible AI threats, including using AI to protect systems against the technology’s potential for misuse and going rogue, said Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo.

“No single safeguard will be enough,” she in Facebook and LinkedIn posts on Oct 2. “We need a multi-layered approach comprising stronger cyber defences, clear limits on what AI can do, appropriate human oversight, and the capabilities to test, monitor and learn as the technology evolves.”

Among other things, this approach means Singapore needs to better understand what powerful artificial intelligence models are capable of through observation, testing and evaluation.

“This provides the essential evidence to assess the broader safeguards needed and the limits to set for AI systems, regardless of how they are deployed,” she said.

International cooperation is vital for AI safety, too. To understand the capabilities and emerging risks of advanced AI models developed and deployed across borders, Teo said Singapore must work with the models’ developers, researchers, third-party testers and other AI safety organisations.

“This is why our international collaborations on testing and evaluation matter. They allow us to pool expertise, compare findings and build a stronger shared understanding of emerging risks,” she said.

Last week, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, Singapore joined the European Union and 19 other countries to call for stronger safeguards for frontier AI models and emphasise the importance of international cooperation on common rules and safeguards for the tech.

AI safety has come under scrutiny after ChatGPT maker OpenAI disclosed in July that its AI agents – bots that can carry out actions with minimal human supervision – had escaped its testing environment. The agents then