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Singapore’s Epic Quest to Harness AI
SOURCE: BLOOMBERG.COM
OCT 11, 2024
By Olivia Poh and Newley Purnell
October 11, 2024 at 6:00 PM PDT
Tech superstar startup OpenAI announced this week that it will set up a hub in Singapore to serve partners and customers in the region — a hard-won victory for the government, which has been trying to boost the nation’s chops in artificial intelligence.
The city-state is among the highest per-capita users of ChatGPT, the generative AI chatbot that OpenAI launched in 2022, so in that sense, the choice of the lion city for an Asian base makes sense. The tech company is also partnering with AI Singapore, a state initiative that brings together local research groups.
But initially, at least, the Singapore outpost will not be a major operation. The San Francisco-based startup has six open roles in Singapore, according to its website, to add to an existing team of three.
That’s a small team for a firm that’s valued at $157 billion and is ramping up expansion after securing billions of dollars in funding and credit. Earlier this year, the US startup opened its first Asia office in Tokyo, with a bespoke GPT-4 model catering to Japanese-language customers.
Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI.Photographer: Jason Redmond/Getty Images
It's still a headline win for Singapore, which has been trying to claw its way into a race dominated by the US and China. Since 2019, the city-state has gone to great lengths to lure AI-related technology, courting companies like Nvidia and Alphabet’s Google Cloud for partnerships and developing its own large language model for Southeast Asian languages.
What's less clear is the extent to which an expanded presence in Singapore would benefit OpenAI.
Artificial intelligence companies eventually will have to monetize their products, for instance by selling their services to businesses and consumers. Singapore is rich, but small. Other markets in the region have many millions of consumers, but with less purchasing power.
Silicon Valley titans like Meta, Google and Netflix have poured money into operations in Asia, where they have built up huge pools of users, but they still derive most of their profits from richer countries.
OpenAI faces the same challenges. —Olivia Poh and Newley Purnell
Singapore’s AI ambitions aren’t limited to luring blue-chip names. Among the young entrepreneurs on the island tapping into the technology’s potential is 29-year-old Chen Zhuo, a graduate of the National University of Singapore and founder of film studio FizzDragon.
On Oct. 6, Chen held a press briefing to announce the studio’s first full-length movie — one entirely generated with AI.
An AI-generated image from the film about pirate Zheng Yi Sao.Source: FizzDragon Pte.
Zheng Yi Sao tells the story of a pirate queen who terrorized the South China Sea in the 19th century. The real-life Zheng is widely considered to be the inspiration for Mistress Ching in the 2007 movie Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.
The FizzDragon epic is one of dozens of AI-generated movies and series in production or planning around the world as the technology begins to transform an industry that has been dominated for a century by big studios. The pirate film was created by more than 100 collaborators from 13 countries and regions, who collectively raised over S$500,000 ($383,000) to make it, according to Chen. They each own part of the copyright and will share any profits.
Chen, founder of Singapore-based film studio FizzDragon on Oct. 6.Source: FizzDragon Pte.
“AI makes film-making a decentralized industry,” said Chen, a Singapore citizen who was born in Wuhan, China. “More people can have the opportunity to create art, and more stories can be published.” —Alfred Cang
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