{"id":45717,"date":"2025-07-29T18:54:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T18:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/45717\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T18:54:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T18:54:08","slug":"key-takeaways-from-fortune-brainstorm-ai-singapore-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/45717\/","title":{"rendered":"Key takeaways from Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello and welcome to Eye on AI. In this edition\u2026China launches its own AI Action Plan\u2026Meta hires an OpenAI veteran for new \u201cchief scientist\u201d role, raising questions about status of AI \u201cgodfather\u201d LeCun\u2026what if AI doesn\u2019t speed up scientific progress?\u2026and economists can\u2019t agree on the impact AI superintelligence could have.
I spent last week in Singapore at Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore<\/a>. It was our second time hosting this event in the thriving city-state, and I was eager to find out what had changed since last year. Here are some of the key thoughts and impressions I took away from the conference:<\/p>\n

The pace of AI adoption is equally fast everywhere. With previous technological waves, many Asian companies and countries lagged the U.S., Europe, and China in adoption. But that\u2019s not the case with AI. Instead, the pace of deployment seems equally fast\u2014and equally ambitious\u2014everywhere.<\/p>\n

Everyone wants AI agents. Few are actually using them yet. Everyone anticipated AI agents last year; now they\u2019re here from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and others. Yet adoption still trails the hype everywhere. Why?<\/p>\n

Agents, by their very nature, are higher risk than most kinds of predictive AI or generative AI that simply produces content. And right now, AI agents are often not that reliable. Some of the ways to make them more reliable\u2014such as using multiple agents, each assigned a specific task within a workflow and with some agents assigned to check the work of others\u2014are also expensive.<\/p>\n

As a result, Vivek Luthra, Accenture\u2019s Asia-Pacific data and AI lead, said that most businesses are using AI to assist human workers within existing workflows. In some cases, they may be using AI as an \u201cadvisor\u201d to provide decision support. But few are automating entire workflows.<\/p>\n

Luthra, however, predicts<\/a> this will change dramatically. By 2028, he forecasts that one-third of large companies will\u00a0have deployed AI agents, and that about 15% of day-to-day workflows could be fully automated. (Accenture is a sponsor of Brainstorm AI.) This is because costs will continue to come down, models will continue to become more capable and reliable, and more companies will figure out how to redesign workflows to take advantage of these new agentic properties.<\/p>\n

AI\u2019s impact on the job market is not easy to discern\u2014yet. Pei Ying Chua, LinkedIn\u2019s APAC head economist, told<\/a> the conference that despite anecdotal reports that young graduates are struggling to find work, there\u2019s not yet much evidence of this in\u00a0the data on open roles that LinkedIn tracks. That said, there has been an uptick in the average number of applications required before coders land a job.<\/p>\n

On the same panel with Chua, both Madhu Kurup, vice president of engineering at Indeed, and Sun Sun Lim, vice president at Singapore Management University, emphasized the need for employees to acquire both AI skills\u2014techniques for prompting models, familiarity with how to build an AI agent, an understanding and of the strengths and\u00a0weaknesses of different kinds of AI\u2014as well as human \u201csoft skills.\u201d As AI transforms all jobs, soft skills like flexibility, resilience, and critical thinking matter more than ever, the two panelists said.<\/p>\n

Jess O\u2019Reilly, Workday\u2019s general manager for ASEAN, said that she thinks AI will lead many companies to adopt an organizational structure based more around teams from diverse functional areas coming together for specific projects and then being reconfigured for the next project. She said this would be like an \u201cinternal gig economy\u201d for employees. Traditional reporting lines and vertical organization would need to change in favor of a flatter, more dynamic org chart, she said.<\/p>\n

Infrastructure is destiny. From several panels at Brainstorm AI Singapore, it was clear that access to AI infrastructure is going to be critical. This is true even when countries don\u2019t want to build their own models. Just running models\u2014what\u2019s known as \u201cinference\u201d\u2014also requires a lot of AI chips.<\/p>\n

But building data center capacity requires big investments in energy. Rangu Salgame, CEO and co-founder of Princeton Digital Group, said<\/a> that in the near-term fossil fuels, especially natural gas, would likely be used to power the data center buildout in Asia\u2014which is not great news for climate policy. But in the medium-term, he saw great potential for AI data centers to force countries to build out renewable energy capacity, such as solar power and offshore wind.
Sovereign AI matters. Delivering it is challenging. Everyone is talking about the need for sovereign AI\u2014and that was certainly the case in Southeast Asia, too. Governments want the ability to control their own destiny when it comes to AI technology and not become overly dependent on solutions from the U.S. and China. But achieving that independence is tricky, as was clear from several of the sessions at Brainstorm AI.<\/p>\n

While increasingly capable open-source models are giving governments some options in terms of which models they choose to build their solutions on, there are still some big constraints.<\/p>\n

First, there\u2019s the huge cost of building out data center capacity and constructing the power plants and upgrading national grids to support it, which I mentioned above. Then there is the issue of training AI models that are adept at local languages and also understand cultural nuance. This requires curating data sets specific to local context, said Kasima Tharnpipitchai<\/a>, head of AI strategy at SCB 10X, which is building an LLM for the Thai language. \u201cThere are no tricks here, you really have to do the work,\u201d he said. \u201cIt really is just effort. It\u2019s almost brute force.\u201d
Embodied AI is China\u2019s big strength. While it often looks like the U.S. and China are evenly matched when it comes to the capabilities of AI models, China has a massive advantage when it comes to \u201cembodied AI\u201d\u2014that is, AI that will live in physical devices, from robotaxis to humanoid robots. That was the message from Rui Ma, founder of Tech Buzz China, who spoke on a fascinating panel looking at the geopolitics of AI<\/a>. China controls almost the entire robotics supply chain and is making rapid progress creating cheap and practical robots designed for factories, as well as general purpose humanoid robots. (One of those humanoid robots\u2014Terri, which uses software from Hong Kong startup Auki Labs, but whose body comes from Chinese robotics company Unitree\u2014wowed delegates at Brainstorm AI.)
There is a middle path between the U.S. and China. Singapore has consistently tried to thread a path between the two superpowers. And at Brainstorm AI, the country\u2019s digital minister Josephine Teo said<\/a> that the country was finding places to act as a bridge between the U.S. and China. For instance, in late April, Singapore played a key role in hosting a meeting of AI safety researchers from both the U.S., China, and elsewhere that arrived at what is called the \u201cSingapore Consensus\u201d\u2014an agreement that AI systems should be reliable, secure, and aligned with human values, as well as a shared vision about ways to ensure that is the case.<\/p>\n

With that, here\u2019s more AI news.<\/p>\n

Jeremy Kahn
jeremy.kahn@fortune.com<\/a>
@jeremyakahn<\/a><\/p>\n

Before we get to the news, I want to flag my most recent Fortune magazine feature on AI darling Perplexity. If you want to know why the \u201canswer engine\u201d company is now worth $18 billion and why tech giants from Google to Apple are watching its every move, please give the story<\/a> a read.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Note: The essay above was written and edited by Fortune staff. The news items below were selected by the newsletter author, created using AI, and then edited and fact-checked.<\/p>\n

AI IN THE NEWS<\/p>\n

China calls for cooperation on AI governance and a new international organization. At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, Chinese Premier Li Qiang called for a global governance framework to coordinate the development of AI and work towards agreed safety standards. He called for the creation of an international organization to coordinate AI efforts and warned against AI becoming an \u201cexclusive game\u201d for a few nations or corporations. He also called for cooperation on the buildout of data center capacity around the world, emphasized the importance of open-source AI models, and said that AI deployment should be \u201cstate led.\u201d Li\u2019s speech came just days after U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his own AI Action Plan, which was designed to ensure the U.S. remains the dominant power in AI development. You can read more on Li\u2019s speech from The Guardian here<\/a>.
U.S. suspends AI hardware export control enforcement amid trade talks with China. The Trump administration has frozen planned restrictions on U.S. technology exports to China, including Nvidia\u2019s H20 AI chip, in an effort to preserve ongoing trade talks and secure a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. This reversal\u2014prompted in part by lobbying from Nvidia\u2014has sparked backlash from national security officials and experts, who warn the H20 chip could accelerate China’s military AI capabilities, particularly in areas like autonomous weapons and surveillance. You can read more from the Financial Times here<\/a>.
Meta hires a new chief scientist amid AI hiring spree, forcing AI \u201cgodfather\u201d LeCun to clarify his role at the company. Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that he had poached AI researcher Shengjia Zhao from OpenAI and was appointing him \u201cchief scientist\u201d for Meta\u2019s new Superintelligence unit. Zhao, who helped develop ChatGPT, is just the latest in a string of researchers Meta has hired away from rival labs, including OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic as well as Apple. But Zhao\u2019s title raised eyebrows among AI industry watchers as it is similar to the title long-held by Yann LeCun, the Turing Award-winner and \u201cgodfather\u201d of AI who Zuckerberg hired back in 2013 to establish Meta\u2019s Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab. LeCun, who has been openly skeptical that current approaches to AI will lead to human-level AI, let alone superintelligence, has been increasingly sidelined in Meta\u2019s drive to develop AI models and products. LeCun was forced to issue a statement on LinkedIn clarifying that he has always been focused on long-term research into new AI methods at FAIR and that \u201cmy role and FAIR\u2019s mission remain unchanged.\u201d You can read more about Zhao\u2019s hiring here<\/a> in TechCrunch and more on LeCun\u2019s statement from Business Insider here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anthropic secures $170 billion valuation, even as expert warns copyright cases could jeopardize the company. Anthropic is raising $5 billion at a $170 billion valuation, the Financial Times reports<\/a>. The amount is triple the company\u2019s March valuation, driven by surging revenue that is now running at a $4 billion annualized pace. But at the same time, Santa Clara University law professor Ed Lee published a blog post in which he calculated that if Anthropic loses the class action lawsuit it is facing over the alleged use of libraries of pirated books to help train its Claude AI model, the company could face \u201cbusiness-ending\u201d damages totaling into the billions of dollars. For more on Lee\u2019s analysis, see my Fortune colleague Bea Nolan here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

EYE ON AI RESEARCH<\/p>\n

Will AI accelerate scientific progress or slow it down? Conventional wisdom is that AI is about to massively accelerate scientific progress. Indeed, hardly a week goes by without news of scientists using AI to help unlock some previously difficult or impossible task\u2014from predicting the structure of proteins to controlling plasma in a fusion reactor. The latest example came last week with Google DeepMind unveiling an AI system called Aeneas<\/a> that can pinpoint the date of Latin inscriptions\u2014a boon to classicists and historians.
But Princeton University computer scientists Sayash Kapoor and Arvind Narayanan, who write a newsletter called AI Snake Oil that is deeply skeptical of much of the hype surrounding AI, argue<\/a> in an essay published earlier this month that the conventional wisdom about AI and science is wrong. Rather than accelerating science, they contend, AI will slow it down.
Their argument rests primarily on AI\u2019s ability to increase the volume of research papers being published, which makes it that much harder for scientists to find novel ideas. They also argue that AI\u2019s ability to make accurate predictions without creating underlying theories of causation will actually decrease human understanding, not advance it. That second argument is one I also explore in my book, Mastering AI<\/a>, and I think it is a real possibility. But, I think Narayan and Kapoor don\u2019t give enough credit to AI tools such as DeepMind\u2019s AlphaFold to rapidly expand the boundary of scientific discovery.<\/p>\n

FORTUNE ON AI<\/p>\n

Many students in China are choosing to learn AI mostly out of \u2018guilt or shame,\u2019 not because they enjoy it, study finds<\/a>\u2014by Sasha Rogelberg
Is a \u2018pretty good\u2019 Alexa+ good enough to pull off a comeback almost two years after Amazon\u2019s revamped voice assistant was first announced?<\/a>\u2014by Jason del Rey
Walmart\u2014yes, Walmart\u2014says AI agents are its future<\/a>\u2014by Jason del Rey<\/p>\n

Satya Nadella on the \u2018enigma of success\u2019 in the age of AI: A thriving business, but 15,000+ layoffs <\/a>\u2014by Nick Lichtenberg
AI is driving mass layoffs in tech, but it\u2019s boosting salaries by $18,000 a year everywhere else, study says<\/a>\u2014by Nino Paoli and Nick Lichtenberg<\/p>\n

Agentic AI systems must have ‘a human in the loop,’ says Google exec<\/a>\u2014by Sheryl Estrada<\/p>\n

AI CALENDAR<\/p>\n

Sept. 8-10: Fortune Brainstorm Tech, Park City, Utah. Apply to attend\u00a0here<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Oct. 6-10:\u00a0World\u00a0AI\u00a0Week, Amsterdam\n<\/p>\n

Oct. 21-22: TedAI San Francisco. Apply to attend here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Dec. 2-7:\u00a0NeurIPS, San Diego\n<\/p>\n

Dec. 8-9:\u00a0Fortune Brainstorm AI San Francisco. Apply to attend here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

BRAIN FOOD<\/p>\n

What would AI superintelligence do to the economy? That question is increasingly being debated among economists as more AI companies begin to talk about artificial superintelligence (ASI) as achievable in the next decade. The Economist has an excellent feature<\/a> covering the various and contradictory views of economic experts. If the AI boosters are right, almost all economic value will accrue to owners of capital. But some funny things can happen during the transition\u2014with wages for workers who are still employed going up, not down. One thing that is clear from the analysis is that, so far, the financial markets, for all their enthusiasm about companies such as Nvidia that are closely linked to the AI boom, are discounting the likelihood of ASI. The whole article is well worth a read.<\/p>\n

This is the online version of Eye on AI, Fortune’s weekly newsletter on how AI is shaping the future of business. Sign up for free<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hello and welcome to Eye on AI. In this edition\u2026China launches its own AI Action Plan\u2026Meta hires an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,36132,36133,1877,3997,74],"class_list":["post-45717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-brainstorm-ai","tag-eye-on-ai","tag-machine-learning","tag-singapore","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}