ARISA SIONG
IMDA
but we must analyse the risks of fully autonomous infrastructure, such as explainability and new attack surfaces. This understanding helps set policy, such as deciding if a‘ human in the loop’ is required for final decisions.”
The same logic applies to quantum. Post-Quantum Cryptography and Quantum Key Distribution each carry different technical limitations and different levels of international acceptance and policy must account for both:“ Policy must consider both limitations and potential to decide the path Singapore should take,” says Wee Sain.
Driving locally relevant AI Arisa Siong, Director of Tech Policy at IMDA, approaches these questions from a policy perspective built on years of working in telecoms regulation across Asia. Her focus is on ensuring that the frameworks IMDA develops are grounded in the practical realities of enterprise deployment rather than theoretical compliance – and that they account for the cultural and contextual dimensions that generic global models often miss.
One of the clearest examples concerns the limits of AI systems trained primarily on Western data.“ A Western-trained Vision Language Model might identify a clock as a great gift, completely missing the profound cultural taboo associated with it in Chinese traditions,” Arisa explains.“ To ensure AI systems reflect the full richness of global cultures, we are actively collaborating with global bodies
ARISA SIONG
DIRECTOR OF TECH POLICY
Arisa Siong is the Tech Policy Director at the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore, working on advancing policy to progress the adoption and commercialisation of emerging technologies. She has extensive experience in a range of policy matters across digital and telecom industries, including AI governance, sustainability and telecoms regulations. Previously, she worked for Telenor on regulatory and public affairs across Asia. She also has prior experience as a consultant for DotEcon, a London-based economic consultancy specialising in networked industries.
like MLCommons – alongside tech leaders like Google and Microsoft – by developing and expanding comprehensive global safety benchmarks to evaluate models for multicultural nuances and complex vulnerabilities.”
Through the National Multimodal LLM Programme, IMDA is also building locally anchored alternatives. Models such as SEA-LION and MERaLiON are designed to reflect Southeast Asia’ s linguistic and cultural range, ensuring that Singapore’ s national identity and regional context are embedded in the foundational technology itself.
14 imda. gov. sg