In his 2018 book, AI Superpowers, venture investor Kai-Fu Lee predicted the world would evolve into Cold War–style digital power blocs, one led by the U.S. and the other by China. The two economic giants would achieve overwhelming dominance in developing artificial intelligence models, Lee argued, because companies in those countries have more venture funding, more scientists, and, above all, far more data than those in other nations. Since AI tends toward monopoly—“better products lead to more users, those users lead to more data, and that data leads to even better products and thus more users and more data,” Lee wrote—the U.S. and China would leap out to “massive leads,” reducing other nations to digital client states.
That prophecy hasn’t daunted tiny Singapore. When it comes to AI, the Southeast Asian city-state—home to 5.6 million people crowded onto a landmass about a quarter the size of Rhode Island—punches well above its weight. In London-based Tortoise Media’s Global AI Index, which assesses AI capability in 62 countries across more than 100 different metrics, Singapore ranked third behind only the U.S. and China. The island nation is leveraging its mammoth container port and bustling airport to offset a dearth of domestic data. Its giant banks and scrappy “super app” companies like Grab and Sea are using AI and data analytics to drive regional and global growth strategies.
